NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 






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ON THE ROAD TO SAN FILI 



NAPLES AND 
SOUTHERN ITALY 



BY 



EDWARD BUTTON 



WITH 12 ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR BY 

FRANK CRISP 

AND l6 OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS 



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NEW YORK 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1915 



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TO THE DEAR MEMORY 
OF 

FRANCIS EDWARD FITZJOHN CRISP 

PAINTER 

SOMETIME CORPORAL, F. COY., 28TH LONDON REGT. (aRTISTS' RlFLES) 

AT THE TIME OF HIS DEATH, 2ND LIEUT., KING's COY. 

1ST BATT. GRENADIER GUARDS 

KILLED IN ACTION 
JANUARY 5, 1 91 5 

AGED 32 YEARS 
^^ Dtilce et decorum est pro patria morV 



CONTENTS 



I. Naples . . . . . i 

II. PosiLipo . . . . '57 

III. The Gulf of Pozzuoli . . '65 

IV. Vesuvius and Pompeii . . -79 
V. Castellammare, Sorrento, and Capri . 96 

VI. The Coast Road from Sorrento to Vietri, 

Amalfi, and Ravello . . .108 

VII. La Cava and Salerno . . .119 

VIII. Eboli and P^stum . . . .128 

IX. Into Calabria . . . .137 

X. From Paola to Cosenza , . -151 

XI, To Catanzaro and Reggio . . .160 

XII. Magna Gr^cia . . . .170 

XIII. Reggio, Gerace, and the Gulf of Squillace 180 

XIV. Crotona . . . . .190 
XV. The Gulf of Taranto . . . 202 

XVI. Taranto . . . . .211 

XVII. Terra d'Otranto — Lecce . . .222 

XVIII. To Brindisi and Bari . . . 232 

XIX. Terra di Bari — Bitonto, Ruvo, Corato, 

Castel del Monte, Andria, Barletta, 

Trani, Bisceglie, and Molfetta . 244 

XX. Le Murge ..... 254 

XXI. Le Tavoliere — Foggia, Troia, Lucera . 267 

XXII. Manfredonia and Monte S. Angelo . 278 

XXIII. Benevento ..... 288 

Index ..... 300 

vii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



IN COLOUR 

On the Road to San Fiij 

Naples Street Scene 

Naples : Porta Carmine 

Pompeii with Vesuvius 

Modern Pompeii 

Amalfi .... 

Tiriolo .... 

Calabrese Peasant Girl 

Piazza S. Oronzo, Lecce 

Apulian Olive Garden 

Pilgrims at a Shrine on the Road to Monte S 
Angelo .... 

Benevento .... 



Frontispiece 

FACING PAGF 

i6 



32 
80 
92 

TIO 

162 
192 
228 
236 

282 
288 



IN MONOTONE 



Map 



From a drawing by B. C. Boulter 

The Harbour, Naples 

From a photograph by C. & H. 



Front End Paper 



24 



X NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

FACING PAGE 

Torso di Venere — Museo Nazionale, Naples . 46 

From a photograph by Alinari 

Apollo — Museo Nazionale, Naples . . .50 

From a photograph by Alinari 

Portrait of Cardinal Farnese by Raphael — Museo 

Nazionale, Naples . . . .68 

From a photograph by Anderson 

SOLFATARA . . . . . .68 

From a photograph by C. & H 



PUTEOH 

From a photograph by C. & H 

The Lake of Avernus 

From a photograph by C. & H 

Pompeii 

From a photograph by C. & H 

Gospel Ambone, Ravello 

From a photograph by Alinari 



68 



72 



86 



116 



Facade of Cathedral, Salerno . . .124 

From a photograph by C. & H. 

Temples of Demeter and Persephone and of 

Poseidon, P^estum . . . -134 

From a photograph by Alinari 

San Fili ...... 154 

From a:\photograph by C. & H. 

COSENZA from the CaSTELLO . . . . I58 

From a photograph by C, & H. 

The Port, Manfredonia .... 278 

From a photograph by C. &. H, 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi 

FACING PAGE 

A Wayside Shrine, Monte S. Angelo . . 284 

From a photograph by C. & H. 

The Pilgrim's Way, Monte S. Angelo . . 284 

From a photograph by C. & H. 

S. MicHELE, Monte S. Angelo . . . 286 

From a photograph by C. & H. 

La Posta, Monte S. Angelo . . . 286 

From a photograph by C. & H. 

Arch of Trajan, Benevento. . . . 292 

From a photograph by Alinari 



NAPLES 
AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

I 

NAPLES 



TO come to Naples from Rome through the noble and 
tragic majesty of the Campagna, along that sombre 
and yet lovely road under Anagni and Monte Cassino, or 
to enter it first without warning out of the loneliness, the 
silence, and the beauty, of the sea, is to experience an 
astonishing disillusion. 

For there is nothing, I think, in all the South — nothing 
certainly in Italy — quite like Naples in its sordid and yet 
tremendous vitality, a vitaUty that is sterile, that wastes 
itself upon itself. The largest and most populous city in 
the peninsula, it might seem, on first acquaintance at 
least, to be rather a pen of animals than a city of men, a 
place amazing if you will, but disgusting in its amazement, 
whose life is merely life, without dignity, beauty or reticence, 
or any of the nobler conventions of civiUzation ; a place 
so restless and noisy and confused that it might be pande- 
monium, so parvenu and second rate that it might be one 
of those new American cities upon the Pacific slope. 

All this is emphasized and accentuated by the unrivalled 
beauty of the world in which the city stands, the spacious 
and perfect loveliness of the great bay sjuning and yet 



2 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

half lost in all the gold of the sun, between the dreaming 
headlands of Sorrento, of Posilipo, of Misenum, the gracious 
gesture, the incomparable outline of Vesuvius, the vision 
of Capri, of Procida and Ischia rising out of the sea, the 
colour of sea and sky, of valley and mountain and curved 
shore. For this is Campania, the true arcady of the 
Romans, and here more than an5rwhere else, perhaps, the 
forms of the past clothed in our dreams are indestructible, 
and will outface even such a disillusion as Naples never 
fails to afford. 

In this incomparable landscape Naples stands not like 
Genoa nobly about an amphitheatre of hills, not like 
Palermo in an enchanted valley, but in the deepest curve 
of her vast and beautiful bay at the foot of the hills and 
upon their lower slopes, beneath the great and splendid 
fortress of Sant' Elmo, which towers up over the city in 
shining beauty and pride, the one noble feature of a place 
that, but for it, would be without any monumental 
splendour. 

Sant' Elmo towers there over the city upon the west ; 
farther away and to the north, upon a scarcely lesser 
height, lies the great Bourbon palace of Capodimonte, 
while to the east, upon the far side of the fruitful valley 
of the Sebethus, rises the violet pyramid of Vesuvius with 
its silver streamer of volcanic smoke. Seen from afar, 
and especially from the sea, there can be but few places 
in the world comparable with this ; the vast and beautiful 
bay closed on the west by Capo Miseno, with its sentinel 
islands, Ischia and Procida, and on the east by the great 
headland of Sorrento more than twenty miles away as the 
gull flies, and defended, as it were, seaward by the island 
of Capri, is dominated in the very midst by the height 
and beauty and strangeness of Vesuvius. Divided by 
many lessef headlands into numerous smaller bays, such 
as that of Baia upon the west and Castellamare upon the 
east, its deepest inlet lies in a double curve within the 
headland of Ppsjlipo, divided by the Pizzofalcone, upon 



NAPLES 3 

the tip of which, rising out of the waves, the Castel dell' 
Ovo stands. To the west of this point lies the bay of 
Posilipo, the Riviera di Chiana, the Villa Nazionale, the 
park of Naples, and the aristocratic and wealthy quarter 
of the city ; to the east Hes Naples itself, the great harbour 
with the city behind it sprawling over the shore, the valley 
and the lower slopes of the hills, held and ennobled by 
the Castel Sant' Elmo behind it on an isolated height of 
Vomero. 

The bay of Posilipo, the Riviera di Chiana with its 
beautiful pleasure-ground, its luxurious villas upon head- 
land and height, offers a vision of modern luxury and 
wealth in the most perfect surroundings of scenery and 
climate, and, save that its buildings are wholly without 
character, it might seem to have nothing in common with 
the city which lies to the east of the Pizzofalcone and the 
Castel dell' Ovo. It is indeed wholly cut off from Naples 
by nature, and in fact the city can only be reached from 
it by two narrow ways — the Strada S. Lucia, which 
passes through the modern slum erected upon the filled-in 
bay of S. Lucia, of old the fishermen's quarter, and the 
steep and crowded Strada di Chiaia, one of the narrowest 
and most characteristic streets of the city. It is by one 
of these narrow ways that you come, and always with a 
new surprise, into the witches' cauldron of the city of 
Naples. 

Those long streets the colour of mud, built from the 
kva of Vesuvius, lined with tall, mean houses balconied 
with iron ; those narrow alleys climbing up towards Sant' 
Elmo or descending to the harbour and S. Lucia, crowded 
and squaHd and hung everjrwhere with ragged clothes 
drying in the fetid air ; the noise that here more than in 
any other city in the world overwhelms everything in its 
confusion and meanness, the howHng of children, the cries 
of the women, the shouting of the men vainly competing 
with the cracking of whips, the beating of horses' hoofs, 
the hooting of steamers, the innumerable bells — not only 



4 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

those, here so harsh, of the churches, but the brutal gongs 
of trams, the bells of cows and goats ; the mere hubbub 
of human speech that seems more deafening than it is by 
reason of the appalling emphasis of gesture : all this 
horrifies and confuses the stranger perhaps chiefly because 
he can find nothing definite in its confusion for the mind to 
seize upon — the mind indeed being half paralysed by the 
mere flood of undistinguishable things, not one of which is 
characteristic, but rather all together. The mere extent 
of the place, too, shapeless as it is, stretching for miles in 
all its sordidness along the seashore, appals one, for its 
disorder is a violent disorder ; its voice the voice of the 
mob, cruel, blatant, enormous, signifying nothing. 

In this boiUng cauldron there is neither happiness nor 
enjojnnent, but after a little, when one's first disgust 
is passed, there remains an extraordinary fascination. 
The life of Naples is the life of the streets, of the salife, 
scale, rampe, of which it is full ; everything takes place 
there in these narrow ways, even the toilet ; and little by 
little one is compelled by the obscene spirit of the city 
to wander continually, and, only half ashamed, to watch 
these poor people in all their pathetic poverty and 
animalism, their amazing unself consciousness, their extra- 
ordinary and meaningless violence of gesture and speech. 

For there is, of course, in all this noisy confusion that 
fills Naples like a cup running over a certain shameful- 
ness that the people do not feel, of which perhaps only 
we who are strangers are aware. All that one means by 
human dignity and self-respect is lacking here, and this 
is felt wherever one goes, not only outside the Galleria 
at evening, when not only beautiful girls are offered in a 
baleful hiss by the innumerable pimps that infest the 
place — ima ragazza, fresca, hella, hellissima, di quindici 
anni — but everywhere one goes, where everytliing is 
hawked at the top of the voice and always at a false price. 
This lack of human respect, of all that one means by 
decency is surely due to something more than the soft- 



NAPLES 5 

ness and luxury of the climate as Chateaubriand thought. 
Centuries of oppression, of the most shameless exploitation 
of the people by their always foreign rulers are answerable 
for the moral anaemia, the want of honour, that have 
made of the Neapolitans something less than men, a true 
canaille that has never possessed enough virility for suc- 
cessful rebellion, and of Naples itself a city without a 
monument, a sprawling mass of houses, churches, palaces, 
streets all built of grey lava, scarce one of which has any 
distinction or beauty. 

What are we to say of these churches, French or Spanish, 
all alike engulfed in the tawdry splendour of the baroque 
or worse ? What are we to say of these piazzas not one of 
which has a noble memory, and only one of which, the 
Mercato, can be said to bear witness to any national 
event ? What are we to say of that palace cheek by jowl 
with a theatre of which, indeed, in its pretentious make- 
believe it might seem to be properly a part ? 

For us, indeed, when the astonishment of Naples, the 
confusion and noise and disorder, the spawning life of 
the place, have passed into weariness, there remains nothing 
to see ; the tombs of her foreign rulers, the museum, the 
wonderful aquarium in the Villa Nazionale, not the least 
interesting thing in this city, and the glory of her situa 
tion, of the world which she dishonours and in which she 
lies, to be best enjoyed, as it were at a glance, from S. 
Martino on the height of Sant' Elmo, the great Carthusian 
monastery founded by Duke Charles of Calabria in 1325 
and rebuilt in the seventeenth century. It is because that 
world is so fair and full of delight that one returns to Naples 
again and again. 

II 

The Story of Naples 

The name of Naples, Neapolis, the new city, indicates 
at once her Greek origin, and indeed she was one of the 



6 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

oldest of those Greek settlements which hundreds of years 
before our era scattered Southern Italy and Sicily with a 
noble and fruitful civilization. 

Perhaps the earliest ^ of all these city states was that 
founded, it is said, by a mixed colony of Chalcidians from 
Euboea and of Cymseans from ^olis, at Cumse, just 
without the beautiful gulf of Pozzuoli some six miles to 
the north of Capo Miseno. Now whether, as happened 
more than once later in Magna Grsecia,^ the two different 
peoples that had thus founded the city of Cumae quarrelled, 
so that the Chalcidians were expelled and proceeded to 
found another state, or whether the colony as a whole, 
having increased and grown rich, decided to establish 
a daughter city, we do not know, but it was from Cumse 
that Parthenope was founded, " where the Siren Parthert pe 
was cast ashore," that is to say, under the headland of 
Posilipo, where to this day Pozzuoli stands. Presently 
either Cumae or Parthenope, her daughter, founded 
another city, within the headland of Posilipo, upon the 
banks of the Sebethus, that is to say, where the Castel 
Capuano stands to-day. This '' new city " was known 
as Neapolis to distinguish it from Parthenope, the old 
city thenceforth known as Palaepohs. 

With those Greek cities founded upon the more southern 
coasts of the peninsula of Italy, which all together formed 
what Polybius ^ first calls Magna Grcecia, I shall deal 
later in this book. This is not the place to speak of them. 
Indeed, though Cumae was probably the earliest of all the 
Greek settlements in Italy and Sicily, Neapolis and Cumae 
were never among the cities which came under that title, 
the most northern of which, Poseidonia (Paestum), was a 
colony of Sybaris, and all of which upon the Tyrrhene 
coast, save Veha only, were colonies of the cities upon the 
Italian shore of the Ionian Sea. Isolated as they were, 
Cumae and her daughters formed a little group apart that 

^ Strabo, Lib. v. 

* As, for instance, with Locri (Pol. xii. 5). ^ Polybius, ii. 39. 



THE STORY OF NAPLES 7 

had almost no connection with the later Greek settlements 
farther south, which came to be known as Magna Graecia. 

The position of these two Greek cities isolated thus on 
the coast of Campania seems, as far as the barbarians in 
whose midst they stood were concerned, to have been fairly 
secure. All the Greek settlements in Italy were apparently 
at first in friendly relations with the Italian tribes of the 
interior whose land they did not covet and whom they 
were willing to admit, to some small extent at any rate, 
to the benefits of their wealth and civilization. Later, 
however, this was not so. The most formidable of the 
barbarian tribes in the fourth century B.C. in Southern 
Italy were the Samnites. The Samnites were bent upon 
conquest, and especially upon the conquest of Capua, at 
that time the richest and greatest city of Southern Italy 
according to Livy.^ For in 343 B.C. the petty people of the 
Sidicini (Teano) had appealed for aid to Capua against 
the Samnites, and the Samnites had been victorious. 
Capua then applied to Rome for assistance, and Rome 
sent the Consul Valerius Corvus with an army and defeated 
the Samnites at Mount Gaurus, Monte Barbaro, near 
Puteoli. About a year later, however, the Campanians, 
but not Capua, strongly espoused the cause of the Latins 
against Rome, and in 340 B.C. both were defeated by the 
Consuls T. Manlius and P. Decius at the foot of Vesuvius. 
Capua itself received the rights of Roman citizenship, but 
the other cities, among them Cumae, but not apparently 
Palaepolis or Neapolis, obtained only the civitas sine 
suffragio. 

The prosperity and wealth of Campania, always great, 
increased, but in 323 B.C. the second war of the Romans 
with the Samnites broke out, and among those who 
espoused the cause of the Samnites, whom they appear to 
have admitted into their city as a garrison, were the people 
of Palaepolis. Thus it appears that in 327-326 B.C. Palae- 
polis was still in existence. It was taken by the Consul 

1 Livy, vii. 31. 



8 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Publilius Philo, and that indeed is the last we hear of the 
" old city " whose name does not again appear in history. 

Neapolis apparently had not aided the Samnites ; at 
any rate the fate of Palaepolis led the Neapolitans to 
conclude a treaty with Rome, who, by the victories of 
Nola in 313 and of Nuceria in 308, securely established 
herself in Campania. 

From this time Naples was in fact a dependency of 
Rome, though she enjoyed the title of an ally ; so favourable 
indeed was her position that when at the end of the Social 
War all the Italian cities obtained the Roman franchise, 
Naples and Heraclea refused it and petitioned in vain 
to remain as she was aforetime. It is not, therefore, 
wonderful that Naples was loyal to Rome. She would 
have nothing to do with PjTrhus when in 282 B.C. he 
approached her, and she steadfastly opposed Hannibal, 
though he continually ravaged her territory. Indeed, 
save for the riot and massacre by the adherents of Sulla 
during the Civil War, in 82 B.C. until the fall of the Re- 
public, Naples was a prosperous provincial and municipal 
town still largely Greek in its culture, institutions, and 
population. 

Perhaps it was the essentially Greek character of the 
city as much as its luxurious climate that made it even 
in the last years of the Republic, and more and more after 
the establishment of the Empire, a favourite residence of 
the wealthy Roman nobility. Its gymnasia and public 
games, over which the Emperors often presided, were 
famous, scholars flocked there, and little by little the 
whole glorious bay, especially the gulf of Pozzuoli between 
Cape Misenum and Posilipo, where Baiae rose, was en- 
crusted and built up with sumptuous villas often thrust 
out into the sea on foundations which remain half marvel- 
lous to this day. Marius had a great villa there which 
LucuUus bought, where Tiberius died and the last Roman 
Emperor, Romulus Augustulus, retired, by the clemency 
of Odoacer, to end his days ; but Lucullus had many 



THE STORY OF NAPLES 9 

villas here, his gardens covered the Pizzofalcone and 
Posilipo, where Virgil finished his Georgics, and whither 
his body was brought from Brundusium for burial. Indeed, 
even before the Claudian Emperors made Naples fashion- 
able, before Nero appeared upon the stage there, or Cahgula 
contrived and built his bridge of boats across the bay of 
Baiae, this was the most famous pleasure resort in the 
Empire. 

With the decline of the Empire the prosperity of Naples, 
of course, decreased, till at last, when upon Alaric's march 
towards Sicily after the sack of Rome in 410, all Campania 
was ravaged and Capua and Nola burnt, Naples did not 
escape any more than she did later when the Vandals 
passed by under Genseric in 455. Indeed we may perhaps 
understand something of the change which had come upon 
the city when we read that the Villa of Lucullus, where 
Tiberius had died, had become a fortress, so that it was in 
a castle that Romulus Augustulus hid himself when he 
let fall the Imperial crown in 576. Naples was, however, 
by no means overwhelmed in these disasters. In the 
thirty years of peace which the Ostrogothic barbarian 
Theodoric gave to Italy, she re-arose, so that Cassiodorus 
tells us that in his time she still rejoiced in every kind of 
pleasure and delight both by land and sea. 

The years that followed — the long years of the re-conquest 
of Italy by Constantinople — were perhaps the most 
disastrous the city had known. Theodoric died in 526, 
and ten years later Belisarius was thundering at her 
gates. Naples was, of course, held by a Gothic garrison, 
and though the people would gladly have surrendered 
the city, the 800 Goths prevented them, so that they had 
to beg Belisarius not to insist. But the great general 
would not hear them. His march from Sicily had been 
a triumphal progress ; Naples was the first city that had 
opposed him. The common people as I say would have 
done his bidding, but the principal citizens and the garrison 
and the Jews, always on the side of the Arians, refused, 



10 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

and a long siege seemed inevitable. A way was found, 
however, to gain an entry through the broken aqueduct.^ 
When this was opened Belisarus again summoned the 
city to surrender, again to be refused. Then he sent a 
company in by the way of the aqueduct, and they from 
within let down ladders up which the Imperialists swarmed 
and took the city and put many to the sword. 

But the Goths returned. Six years later, in a.d. 543, 
Totila retook the city and dismantled the walls ; but the 
defeat of Teias, his successor, under Vesuvius, ended the 
Gothic power, and Naples came into the administration of 
the Byzantine Empire, receiving a Dux, dependent upon 
the Exarch of Ravenna. 

In spite of all these miseries Naples was still exceedingly 
rich, and presently became prosperous. From the early 
part of the eighth century she was to all intents and pur- 
poses independent, facing successfully the Lombard 
invaders who had established their duchies all about her, at 
Benevento, Capua, and Salerno : she was not less success- 
ful in facing the Saracen pirates, but they oppressed her, 
though they could not ruin her as they did so many other 
places in Southern Italy. At last she shamefully allied 
herself with these Orientals, and on this account was 
excommunicated by Pope John viii. 

It was in the first years of the eleventh century that 
the Normans first appeared in the South, and their advent 
here as elsewhere was full of astonishment, for they were 
men of steel, aU lords and all warriors ; every act of 
theirs has the force and the inspiration of an act of genius 
and whatsoever they achieved endured. The story of 
their advent is exceedingly romantic. According to one 
version, it was when a certain company of them were on 
pilgrimage to that cavern upon Monte S. Angelo in Gar- 
gano that they were accosted by the leader of the anti- 
Byzantine party in Bari, Melus by name, who, seeing what 

^ The aqueduct was the Ponti Rossi north-east of the city below 
Capodimonte. 



THE STORY OF NAPLES ii 

manner of men they were, sought them as allies and 
promised them Apulia as a brave inheritance. They 
returned to Normandy to persuade, if they could, their 
countrymen to cross the Alps. In this they were success- 
ful. Crossing the Alps in small companies and by separate 
roads, they assembled in the neighbourhood of Rome, 
were there met by Melus, who supplied them with horses 
and all that was needful. Then they rode down into Apulia. 
Three battles followed. In the first at Arenula, on the 
river Fortore, they were successful, as they were also in 
the second, near Troia, but in the following year, 1018, 
they were woefully defeated on the plain of Cannae by 
the Catepan, the Byzantine head of the "Capitanate" 
Basil Bojannes. Melus was taken prisoner, and the 
Normans seem to have wandered as a great band of free- 
lances ready to seU their aid to the various princes of 
Capua, Benevento, Salerno, and Naples for any under- 
taking whatsoever. So formidable was their prowess 
that with them went victory. In the year 1030, in the 
service of the Duke Sergius iv of Naples, their leader, 
Rainulf, who first married the sister of Sergius, was assigned 
the town of Aversa always in dispute between Naples 
and Capua, and this the Normans made their eyrie and 
their fortress. Thence they issued forth to make them- 
selves masters of aU Calabria and Apulia, and though 
in 1030, upon the visit of the Emperor Conrad to Southern 
Italy, they lost Aversa, which was united with the princi- 
pality of Salerno, they had achieved this with the excep- 
tion of the sea-board towns by the year 1041. After 
the loss of Aversa they established their capital at Melfi 
and divided their conquest into twelve counties. The 
two Empires with the Pope were leagued against them, 
but without effect, and by 1052 the Papacy had decided 
to recognize their conquests, and in its turn to use their 
valour and genius.^ Therefore Robert Guiscard was 
created " By the grace of God and S. Peter, Duke of 

^ See infra, p. 260. 



12 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Calabria, Apulia, and hereafter of Sicily " ; for Sicily was 
not yet in Norman hands. All these lands were held as 
fiefs of the Holy See, and as such they were held there- 
after for more than seven hundred years. 

Robert Guiscard became thus the first Duke in 1059 » 
in 1060 he seized Reggio, in 1068 Otranto, in 1071 Bari 
and Brindisi, in 1073 the Repubhc of Amalfi, in 1077 the 
Duchy of Salerno, the last remnant of the Lombard power, 
and by 1091 his successor, Roger (1035-1111), had acquired 
from the Saracens the whole island of Sicily. Roger i 
was succeeded by William (1111-1127), ^^^ i^ ^^3^ 
Roger II, who made Palermo his capital, was entitled king 
by the Antipope Anacletus 11, a title confirmed in 1139 
by Pope Innocent 11. 

It was this man who at last, in the very year Innocent 
acknowledged him king, entered Naples — the first Norman 
to hold it — the city throwing its gates open to him. His 
reign was glorious. No state in the world at that time 
was better administered than his ; he reconciled his sub- 
jects the one to the other, and after ages of something like 
anarchy he established and maintained peace in his realm. 
He expected and received loyalty from Mussulmans and 
Greeks and Catholics among his subjects, and equally 
permitted the official use of the several tongues. And 
from this strange harmony arose the beautiful cathedral 
of Cefalu and the Palatine chapel of Palermo, where above 
the glorious Byzantine mosaics rises the wooden Saracenic 
roof below which runs an Arabic inscription. 

To this great man succeeded William i (1154-1166). 
This man, sumamed the Bad, had none of the intelligence 
of his father, and his violence and cruelty imperilled all 
that Roger had done. He was excommunicated by 
Adrian iv, but took his part against Barbarossa and 
reconciled himself at last by agreeing to pay the Holy See 
an annual tribute. It was he who founded in Naples the 
Castel Capuano which Frederick 11 finished, and which 
became not only his favourite residence, but that of the 



THE STORY OF NAPLES 13 

Angevins after him. He was succeeded by William 11, 
sumamed the Good (1166-1189), whose heiress was his 
Aunt Constance, married to Henry vi, the future Emperor, 
against the wishes of the Pope and the people of Italy, 
who did not wish the Kingdom to pass into the hands of 
the Hohenstaufen. Therefore the nobles assembled at 
Palermo, proclaimed Tancred of Lecce, the illegitimate 
son of Roger, king. Now appears in Sicily, on his way to 
the Holy Land, our Coeur de Lion, with a fantastic claim 
to the island, so that all were glad to see him depart (1191). 
But before the end of that year Henry vi had begun to 
make war. In this affair Constance fell into the hands 
of Tancred, who treated her with honour and sent her 
with presents to her husband, who was busy with Coeur de 
Lion. Tancred died in 1194 without a friend in Europe. 
His son and successor, William iii, was an infant of three 
years. On came Henry vi, and all the Kingdom lay at 
his mercy ; he pillaged and took it. By the treaty of 
1 195 only the principality of Taranto was reserved to 
William, but the Emperor was not satisfied ; he seized the 
young King and, like a true Hohenstaufen, put out his 
eyes and imprisoned him in a fortress of the Orisons till 
his death. 

The bloody, treasonous, and heretical race of the 
Hohenstaufen thus possessed themselves of the Kingdom. 
Henry was crowned at Palermo, and there in 1197 he 
died, poisoned by his wife Constance, moved to this horror 
by his oppression and cruelties to his usurped subjects. 
He left as his heir Frederick 11, whom she made the ward 
of Pope Innocent iii, named by her regent of the Kingdom. 
The Pope allowed Frederick to occupy both the throne 
of the Empire and that of the Kingdom on condition that 
the two governments should remain separate and in- 
dependent the one of the other, and that upon the death 
of Frederick the two crowns should not be inherited by 
the same prince. It is needless perhaps to say that these 
conditions were not kept. Frederick would promise any- 



14 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

thing ; not once did he keep his word. He wearied 
Pope Innocent, he wearied Pope Honorius ; Gregory ix, 
tired of being deceived, excommunicated him. Then the 
half Mussulman Emperor marched on Rome. He should 
have remembered the fate of his predecessor, who stood 
in the snows of Canossa. The Pope went to Viterbo, and 
Frederick, who had chased the vicegerent of God from 
his seat, departed for the Orient, where he was crowned 
king of Jerusalem. But such a man, learned, but un- 
balanced, a romantic poet, an unappeasable but not a 
great soldier, above all more than half a Mohammedan, 
in those days certainly as appalling a treason to Europe 
as to Christ, could have no peace. His life was war, his 
son rebelled against him, all Italy was weary of him. In 
1230 he reconciled himself with the Pope only to be ex- 
communicated again for violence against the Holy See. 
A general coalition of Christian princes was on the point 
of forming itself against him when the Pope died, to be 
followed by Frederick in 1250. 

Frederick was succeeded in the Kingdom by his son 
Conrad, already king of the Romans, and thus the promise 
given to Pope Innocent iii was broken. Between him 
and his half-brother Manfred the Kingdom was torn to 
pieces, till Conrad died at twenty-six years of age in 1254. 
There remained Manfred and Conradin, Conrad's son, 
against whom, as a Hohenstaufen, Innocent iv thundered, 
himself entering Naples in the year of Conrad's death, 
where he died and was buried in the Duomo, as we may 
still see. In the days of Pope Alexander iv (1254-1261) 
Manfred dominated Southern Italy, and was crowned 
king in 1258. But in 1261 Pope Alexander died, and a 
Frenchman, Urban iv, reigned in his stead. To him 
especially, the Hohenstaufen were accursed, and he 
had no intention of allowing them to remain as his 
vassals in the Kingdom. He therefore offered the two 
Sicilies to whomsoever would free the Holy See from 
their domination. 



THE STORY OF NAPLES 15 

It was the brother of S. Louis of France, the great 
Charles of Anjou, who offered himself. He levied an 
army in Provence, and to his standard flocked the Guelfs 
of Italy. Down he came, thundering into the Kingdom 
to break and to slay Manfred upon January 26, 1266, at 
Benevento. 

It was fifteen-year-old Conradin who would avenge his 
uncle. He, too, came thundering into Italy, but on the 
23rd August 1268, the French broke him in pieces at 
TagUacozzo, and an Itahan traitor, Frangipani, took him 
as he fled, and in the words of Villani, " he led him captive 
to King Charles, for which cause the king gave him land 
and lordship at Pilosa, between Naples and Benevento. 
And when the king had Conradin and those lords, his 
companions, in his hands, he took counsel what he should 
do. At last he was minded to put them to death, and he 
caused by way of process an inquisition to be made 
against them as against traitors to the Crown and enemies 
of Holy Church, and this was carried out ; for on the . . . 
day were beheaded in the market-place of Naples, beside 
the stream of water which runs over against the church 
of the Carmelite friars, Conradin and the Duke of Austria 
and Count Calvagno and Count Gualferano and Count 
Bartolomeneo and two of his sons and Count Gherardo 
of Pisa. . . ." 

Thus perished the last of the Hohenstaufen. A column 
of porphyry now in the sacristy of the church of S. Croce, 
ill the Piazza del Mercato, once marked the spot where the 
execution took place. It bears this inscription — 

Asturis ungue leo, pullum rapiens aquilinum 
Hie deplumavit, acephalumque dedit. 

Charles i of the House of Anjou reigned in the Kingdom. 
The Pope blamed him for his cruelty in executing so mere 
a boy as Conradin, but at least by that act the Papacy and 
Italy were rid of the Hohenstaufen. In commemoration of 
his victory over Manfred King Charles built in Naples the 



i6 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

church of S. Lorenzo, nor was this the only splendour 
which this great and ambitious ruler bestowed upon his 
capital. By the hands of Giovanni Pisano he built S. 
Maria Nuova, which was rebuilt, alas, at the end of the 
sixteenth century. He laid the foundations of the Duomo, 
finally built by his successor, Robert the Wise, and the 
Castel Nuovo, which the kings of his house and of Aragon 
were to make their chief residence. But in spite of his 
essential greatness, his indomitable purpose and adventur- 
ous spirit, his life ended in disaster. In 1282 the violent 
revolution against his government known as the Sicilian 
Vespers destroyed the security he had so laboriously con- 
structed. Pedro of Aragon, who had married a daughter of 
Manfred, appeared on the island and held it. The fleets of 
Anjou were beaten, and Charles's son, the Prince of 
Salerno, made prisoner. The King was indeed preparing 
to reconquer Sicily when in 1285 he died of fever. He 
appears, if you will, as cruel, tyrannical, and essentially an 
adventurer in a country where every riiler save the Popes 
was just that, but also as incomparably the greatest of the 
house he founded and perhaps the greatest ruler the 
Kingdom was ever to see. 

He was succeeded by his son, Charles 11 (1285-1309), 
who, made prisoner in Sicily, was in Aragon when the 
news of his father's death reached him. Pope Martin iv 
and the king of France insisted upon and obtained his 
release, and he took possession of Provence, Anjou, Maine, 
and the Kingdom, but not of Sicily, which in 1302, after 
the defeat of Falconera, he abandoned to Federigo, the son 
of Pedro of Aragon, on condition that after his death the 
island should come back to the descendants of Charles i. 
Indeed he was no soldier as his father was ; a good man, 
but weak, he busied himself, and perhaps wisely, rather in 
the administration of the dominion he possessed than in 
conquest or reconquest. Naples owes to him the church 
of S. Domenico Maggiore, which in spite of restoration 
remains one of the finest churches in the city. 




NAPLES STREET SCENE 



THE STORY OF NAPLES 17 

To this sober and unadventurous man succeeded his 
third son, Robert the Wise (1309-1343). Charles i, the 
founder of the Hue, had certainly been at one moment of 
his career the arbiter of Italy ; it was Robert's dream to 
regain that position and to crystallize it. He was a Guelf, 
the champion and first the protege, and then the tyrant 
of the Holy See, from whom he obtained lordships all 
over Italy, in Piedmont, Ferrara, and Romagna, while 
the Genoese in 1318 called him in to deal with their 
Ghibellines. In 1314 he attempted, but unsuccessfully, to 
regain Sicily, and for many years he remained in Avignon, 
where the Pope then was, as the power behind the Apos- 
tolic throne. In 1324 he returned to Naples, and again 
unsuccessfully attempted to reconquer the island with an 
expedition commanded by his son, Charles,Duke of Calabria. 
It was upon this youth that Robert placed all his hopes. 
When the Florentines turned to him and besought his 
assistance against Castruccio Castracani of Lucca the 
price he asked was that they should receive Charles as their 
Prince for ten years from 1326. But in 1328 Charles was 
dead and his dreams foundered. He then turned and 
staked his hopes upon the daughter of his beloved son, 
Giovanna, whom he married to Andrew of Hungary, his 
cousin, who had certain claims upon the throne of Naples ; 
but here too he was unfortunate. In his old age more 
than ever he turned to learning and art for consolation. 
He had always rejoiced in them, had patronized Petrarch 
and presented him with the royal mantle in which he 
was crowned poet laureate upon the Capitol, and Naples 
owes many churches to him, among them S. Chiara, which 
Giotto and Simone Martini painted, and where he with so 
many of his house lie. Other churches of his foundation 
or building are the SS. Annunziata, S. Pietro Marcella, 
and the glorious Carthusian monastery of S. Martino and 
the great fortress of Cast el Sant' Elmo over it. 

When Giovanna (1343-1361) succeeded her grandfather 
in 1343 she was but eighteen years old. Exquisite, beauti- 
2 



t8 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

ful, and voluptuous, the young Queen hated her husband, 
the cold and ambitious Andrew of Hungary, to whom her 
grandfather had married her for reasons of state. He 
wished to govern alone, and both Giovanna and her Neapoli- 
tans were determined that he should fail. A conspiracy 
inspired by the Queen was formed against Andrew, who 
was strangled in the Castle of Caserta in September 1345, 
and two years later Giovanna married her cousin, Louis of 
Taranto, to whom indeed Andrew owed his death. But 
Andrew was not without champions, though they were not 
to be found in the Kingdom. His brother Louis of 
Hungary descended upon Italy to avenge him; and the 
Queen was compelled to flee to Avignon, where she bought 
the Pope's assistance at the price of that city and its 
territory and 80,000 florins of gold. The Holy See stopped 
the war, and Giovanna returned to Naples in 1348. In 
1362 she was again a widow, and at once married the king 
of Majorca; who presently fearing for his life fled away to 
Spain, where he died in 1375. I^ "^^^ following year the 
Queen, aged now fifty-one, again married Otto of Biiinswick; 
but this disgusted both the Papacy and the Kingdom, 
neither of which desired to see German influence again 
in the South. The Queen indeed had no heirs, her only 
child, a son of Andrew's, having died. She had therefore 
adopted Charles of Durazzo, beloved by the people, as 
her successor, and in 1369 married him to her niece. This 
did not suit Otto her new husband ; but the Pope, Urban vi, 
when she would have broken with Charles, dethroned her 
and crowned him as King. But in Avignon there was 
Pope Clement vii. To him she turned. He advised her 
to adopt Louis of Anjou, and she followed his counsel. 
Therefore in 1350 Charles of Durazzo marched upon 
Naples. He broke Otto of Brunswick and took him 
prisoner, besieged Giovanna in the Castel Nuovo, and to 
such good purpose that presently she opened the gates to 
him. At that very moment a Proven9al fleet appeared in 
the bay to aid her ; but it was too late. Charles had the 



THE STORY OF NAPLES 19 

Queen in his power ; he imprisoned her in the Castel di 
Murano in the BasiUcata, where upon May 22, 1381, he 
had her suffocated. 

Giovanna's reign was in many ways glorious. Her 
court was the centre of art and letters, attended among 
others by Petrarch and Boccaccio. Indeed it is said that 
it was for her the Decameron was written. Among the 
churches which she built were those of S. Giovanni a 
Carbonara and the Incoronata, founded to commemorate 
her marriage with Louis of Taranto. The chapel in 
which she had been married to Louis was incorporated 
into the new building and painted by a pupil of Giotto's 
with frescoes in which we see portraits not only of Giovanna 
but of her father Charles, and her grandfather, Robert the 
Wise. 

For two years after the Queen's death Louis of Anjou 
and Charles of Durazzo (1381-1386) disputed the Kingdom 
till in 1383 the former died. In 1386, however, Charles 
was called to the throne of Hungary, and in the following 
year was assassinated. His short reign is scarcely com- 
memorated by any building in Naples. Only the church 
of S. Angelo a Nilo, built in 1385 by Cardinal Brancaccio, 
serves to remind us of it. 

To him succeeded his son Ladislas (1386-1414), a child 
who presently showed not only a fine courage but military 
ability. He too dreamed of the domination of Italy ; he 
invaded the Papal States and Rome itself in 1410, and 
was in arms against the Florentines when he died. He, or 
rather his favourite, Guerello Origlia, began the beautiful 
church of S. Anna dei Lombardi. 

His sister, Giovanna 11 (1414-1435) , succeeded him. More 
dissolute and unscrupulous than Giovanna i, she, widow 
on her accession of William of Austria, married Jacques 
de Bourbon, who, on account of her numerous infidelities, 
locked her up. Presently she reconciled herself with her 
husband, and on being liberated managed to imprison him 
in Naples. He escaped, and at last entered a Franciscan 



20 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

convent, while she enjoyed herself with her latest lover, 
Caracciolo, to whom she gave all the power of her govern- 
ment. Childless, surrounded on all sides by claimants to 
her throne, she at last adopted Alfonso of Aragon as her 
successor, who already held not only Sicily but Sardinia. 
Upon this war broke out between the claimants, and 
Alfonso was victorious. But what had happened in 
the time of Giovanna i happened again. Alfonso, on 
entering Naples, seized the government. The Queen, 
jealous of her prerogative, disowned him and adopted as 
her heir Louis of Anjou. The whole Kingdom was involved 
in civil war and became the mere loot of various condot- 
tieri. Finally the Angevin cause was victorious, Alfonso 
was recalled to Spain by events there, and Louis of Anjou 
reigned in Naples as Regent while the Queen amused her- 
self with her favourites. He died, but upon the death of 
the Queen soon after, in 1435, it was found that she had 
named as her heir his brother Rene. 

Rene was the last of the Angevins to reign in Naples. 
He fell into the snare of the Visconti of Milan. Facing 
Alfonso of Aragon for the Kingdom, he sought and obtained 
Visconti' s aid and took his enemy prisoner. Alfonso was 
taken to Milan, and there he and Visconti came to an under- 
standing for their mutual benefit, the result of which was 
the loss of the Kingdom by the House of Anjou. For 
Alfonso was presently set at liberty, and with Visconti's 
assistance set out to conquer Naples, which he was able 
to do in 1442. Rene fled to Provence, where he wasted 
himself in the national quarrel, and died at last a lonely 
and pathetic figure spoiled and deserted by all. 

Thus Alfonso paramount in Sicily ^ re-estabhshed the 
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1442. This, it is true, only 
endured for his lifetime, for on his death in 1458 his brother 
Juan inherited Aragon, Sicily, and Sardinia, while his heir 
in Naples was his bastard, Ferdinand ; but he established 

^ Sicily in 1409 had upon the extinction of the local Aragon 
dynasty been reconciled to the Crown of Aragon 



THE STORY OF NAPLES 21 

the Spanish rule, which was in one form or another to 
endure till 1707. 

Although Alfonso broke his people with taxes, he was 
known as the Magnanimous, and his court was perhaps 
the most brilliant that Naples was to know. A great 
patron of the humanists, who flocked to him after the fall 
of Constantinople, he was a true Prince of the Renaissance, 
thoroughly Italian, if not by birth by culture, a prodigal 
Maecenas, a distinguished soldier and a fine scholar. It 
is said that he knew Virgil and Caesar by heart, and certainly 
he was passionately interested in everything concerning 
antiquity. The noble Triumphal Arch that he built in 
1455-1458 before the Castel Nuovo, and which remains 
perhaps the noblest work of art of that time in Naples, 
was largely due to his study of Vitruvius. He surrounded 
himself with artists, and knew how to appreciate iEneas 
Silvius Piccolomini when he came to Naples as ambassador 
of the Sienese. 

He was succeeded in Naples, as I have said, by his bastard 
son, Ferdinand i (1458-1494), whose character was as mean, 
tyrannical, and contemptible as his father's had been 
generous. His reign was full of every sort of trouble. 
Jean of Anjou, a son of King Rene, broke him at Samo ; 
he quarrelled with his suzerain the Pope, conspired with 
the Pazzi to murder Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici in 
Florence, and saw the Turk invade Otranto and massacre 
the inhabitants. His poor political ability, however, 
by no means interfered with his love of the Arts, which 
he inherited in full measure from Alfonso. He is best 
represented in Naples by the Porta Capuana, built in 1484, 
and by the Castel del Carmine, which he began in the same 
year ; and to him also is due the church of SS. Severino e 
Sosio, built in 1490. 

Ferdinand's son, Alfonso 11, had already, before he suc- 
ceeded him in 1494, given splendid proofs of his courage 
and military ability in repulsing the Turks from Otranto ; 
but although he was so fine a soldier he was not less a cruel 



22 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

voluptuary, hated and feared by his people, and surnamed 
by them dio delta came. Therefore when Charles viii 
of France appeared, called into Italy by the Sforza of 
Milan and claiming the Kingdom as the representative, 
so he said, of the House of Anjou, Alfonso in 1495 abdicated 
in favour of his son Ferdinand 11, but did not thereby save 
his Kingdom, for Charles entered Naples almost without 
striking a blow. In 1496, however, upon the retreat of 
Charles, who saw all Italy leagued against him at last, 
Ferdinand returned only to die, leaving no issue. 

He was succeeded by his uncle, Federigo iii, the last 
of the Aragon House. He appealed for aid against the 
French to Spain, but Ferdinand the Catholic and Louis xii 
had already decided to divide the Kingdom of Naples 
between them. They invaded Italy, but soon quarrelled, 
with the result that Gonzalvo of Cordova drove the French 
out, and thenceforth Naples was ruled by viceroys of the 
Spanish Crown. The first of these was Gonzalvo himself, 
but in 1507 he was recalled to Spain by his jealous master, 
and died while making up his mind to revolt. He was 
but the first of an undistinguished and often nameless 
crowd of governors which fills the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. To some of them Naples owes noble buildings — 
for instance, the great street called till yesterday the 
Toledo was built by and named after the Viceroy 
of the Emperor Charles v, Don Pedro de Toledo 
(1532-1554). To the same man are due the sculptures of 
the Porta Capuana, placed there on the occasion of the 
visit of the Emperor ; he also rebuilt the Castel deU' Ovo 
and the church of S. Giacomo degli Spagnuoli. 

In 15 14 the Duke of Osuna was appointed Viceroy, and 
to him Naples owes the Gesu Nuovo, the Trinita, and S. 
Paolo Maggiore ; while the Conde de Lemos, Viceroy 
under Philip 11 of Spain, built in 1607 the Palazzo Reale. 

Against the Spanish domination, or rather against the 
brutal excesses of the viceroys, almost the only revolt of 
the Neapolitan people of which any news has come down 



THE STORY OF NAPLES 23 

to us took place in the middle of the seventeenth century. 
This was the rising led by the Amalfi fisherman Masaniello 
in 1647 against the new heavy taxation of fruit. The 
people, led by Masaniello, seized the Castel del Carmine, 
defeated the regular troops, and put to death the nobility 
and the partisans of the Viceroy, the Duke of Arcos. In 
fear of a final overthrow, the Duke conceded their demands, 
and Masaniello was appointed dictator. But unfortunately 
he was not capable of government ; he became mad, and 
the reaction carefully prepared by the Duke declared 
itself in 1647, when Masaniello was safely murdered and 
his head displayed over the portico of the Palazzo Reale 
amid the applause of the populace. This episode — for it 
was little more — -would seem to give us the secret of the 
shameful history of Naples. We are wont to say that a 
people gets the government which it deserves, and this 
is perhaps more true of the Neapolitan than of any 
other people in Europe. Incapable of any real action, 
without sincerity, loyalty, or honour, the canaille that 
called itself a people fell after a few futile gesticulations 
back into the power of the viceroys of Spain. Such a 
people can have no history worthy of record. 

In the war of the Spanish Succession Naples was con- 
quered by the Austrians for Charles iii, son of the Emperor 
Leopold and claimant of the Spanish throne. But in 
1734 Charles of Bourbon, son of Duke Philip of Parma, 
assisted by the Spanish general Montemar, easily con- 
quered Naples and became King Charles iii. The Austrians 
tried to retrieve their loss, but were defeated at Velletri 
in the following year. Charles introduced certain reforms, 
but he could not make men of the Neapolitans. When he 
ascended the Spanish throne he left Naples to his third 
son, Ferdinand iv (1759-1825). This man having failed 
to drive the armies of the French Republic out of the 
Papal States in 1798 retired to Sicily, and in came the 
French, not the Neapolitan, Revolution in 1799. That 
glorious and virile government in its love of antiquity pro- 



24 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

claimed, with a naivete almost pathetic in its ignorance 
of the stuff of Naples, the Parthenopean Republic ! It 
endured by a miracle for something under seven years, till 
by the efforts of Cardinal Fabricius Ruffo Scilla — mark 
this, a priest ! — the Kingdom was restored. In 1806 
Naples was again conquered by Joseph Bonaparte, who 
became King, but on ascending the throne of Spain was 
succeeded at Naples by Murat, dethroned and killed in 181 5. 
The last years of the Kingdom were as wretched as it 
deserved and as we might expect. Then by God's grace, 
out of the north came Garibaldi, who, having conquered 
Sicily and taken Calabria too by violence, entered Naples 
upon September 7, i860. On October i the battle of 
Voltumo was fought, and won by the Piedmontese ; Francis 
of Bourbon retired to Gaeta, where after a fine resistance 
he capitulated on February 12, 1861. Piedmont had 
made a free gift of liberty to Naples, which became part of 
the Kingdom of United Italy upon November 7, i860. 

Ill 

Classical Naples 

The strange confusion of Naples — of its life, which seems 
to be without purpose ; of its history, which seems to be 
without meaning — is found too in the city itself in its 
topography : there is no city in Italy more difficult to see 
in any sort of logical way proceeding from what is old 
to what is new. And this is not altogether due to the fact 
that each government she has endured, for the most part 
with so shameful a patience, has been anxious for political 
purposes to destroy or to transform the work of its pre- 
decessors ; the city seems to have no will of its own. 
Naples appears, at first sight at any rate, to have no com- 
mon centre in which all the life of the city meets. Such 
an impression, excusable enough, is, however, only true in 
part. Certainly we shall not find the heart of Naples in 



CLASSICAL NAPLES 25 

the Piazza del Municipio, over which the Castel Nuovo 
presides; nor, in spite of the Bourbons, in the deserted 
royal square before the Palazzo Reale, surrounded though 
it be with official buildings ; nor even in the market-place, 
the Piazza del Mercato, so full of terror and shame, where 
the last of the Hohenstaufen, a boy of seventeen, perished 
with his knights, and where the lazzaroni crowned and 
killed their king. 

Not in any of these lies the heart of the city, but in the 
harbour. Naples radiates from her port like an open fan 
from its pivot, spread out east and west about the great 
bay upon the slopes of Vomero and the great and fruitful 
plain between it and Vesuvius. It was the harbour which 
made Neapolis ; it is the harbour which is the true centre 
and heart of the city to-day ; and it remains the one thing 
which in all the three thousand years of her history has not 
fundamentally changed but is still the true source of her 
life and well-being. 

Indeed, of that old Greek city of Neapolis the. harbour 
is the only thing which in some sort is left to us, the Piccolo 
Porto behind the Immacolata Vecchia ; apart from that, 
all that remains to us not only of Greek Neapolis but of 
classical antiquity in Naples is a few ruins, the merest 
fragments, the best of which are perhaps the remains of 
the Temple of Castor and Pollux in the fagade of S. Paolo 
Maggiore. S. Paolo occupies what may well have been 
the centre of the Greek city whose confines upon the east 
are fairly well represented by the Corso Garibaldi. The 
Duomo, which lies to the east of S. Paolo, is said to occupy 
the site of the two temples dedicated respectively to 
Neptune and Apollo, from which it obtained the columns 
and marbles we see. Nearly opposite the Duomo in the 
Via Anticaglia are two arches and other fragments of the 
theatre in which Nero is said to have made his debut ; 
while S. Giovanni Maggiore, to the west of S. Paolo behind 
the University, is said to occupy the site of a temple erected 
by Hadrian to Antinous. 



26 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

The remains in the fagade of S. Paolo, in the Duomo, 
and the arches in the Via AnticagHa are almost all that is 
left to us of the Naples of antiquity, but upon the southern 
slope of Capodimonte the Ponti Rossi still preserves remains 
of the Aqua Julia, which Augustus erected to supply the 
naval harbour of Misenum with water from the Sebethus. 

By far the most impressive monument that is left to us 
of the Imperial time in Naples, however, is not to be found 
in any ruin above-ground, but in the Catacombs which 
open upon the western slope of Capodimonte ; they are 
perhaps the most amazing in the world. They stretch 
for miles, certainly as far as Pozzuoli ; and though they have 
been very little opened, they would seem to consist of a 
vast series of immense halls beside which the Catacombs 
of Rome are mere passages and rooms. They are entered 
from the churches of La Sanita, in which is the tomb of 
S. Gaudiosus, and of S. Gennaro de' Poveri, in its founda- 
tion a building of the eighth century erected upon the 
site of a chapel of the time of Constantine where the body 
of S. Januarius, the patron of Naples, was buried. These 
Catacombs were perhaps originally a burial-place for the 
poor, but like those of the Campagna they became a refuge 
for the early Christians, and are worth some effort to see 
if only because they present the same touching spectacle 
of faith as those at Rome. Here are similar numerous 
loculi and sepulchral niches ; the same symbols are used — 
the dove, the fish, the olive branch ; the same representa- 
tion of Christ as the Good Shepherd. And when we have 
seen them we have seen the last of classical Naples ; in 
the city to-day there remains, I think, less of antiquity 
than in almost any other great town of the South. 

And yet, though materially all that would remind us of 
Greece and Imperial Rome has disappeared, it is of them 
we continually think as we make our way about the foot 
of these hills where Naples lies so restless beside the 
Tyrrhene Sea, 



NAPLES 27 

IV 

The Fortresses, Palaces, Gates, and Harbour 

OF Naples 

Everyone, I suppose, begins his exploration of Naples 
with a visit to the Cast el dell' Ovo, which stands really in 
the midst of the waves where the Pizzofalcone, a spur of 
Vomero, thrusts itself into the sea to form till yesterday 
the western arm of the little bay of S. Lucia. 

Castel deir Ovo was the oldest fort which dominated 
and defended Naples ; its sisters younger than she were the 
Castel Capuano, founded by William i and completed by 
Frederick 11 ; the Castel Nuovo, begun by Charles i of Anjou 
and enlarged by Alfonso of Aragon ; the Castel del Carmine, 
erected by Ferdinand i of Aragon in 1484 ; and the mighty 
fortress upon the height that still commands the whole 
city and bay, Castel Sant' Elmo, built by Robert the Wise 
but enlarged by the Spaniards. 

The fortress of Castel dell' Ovo that we see, now a 
prison, was begun by William i, the grandson of the great 
Roger and the son of the first Norman king of Naples and 
Sicily, in 1154. His work was completed by the Emperor 
Frederick 11 and used as a treasury, and after the battle of 
Benevento the children of Manfred were here imprisoned, 
only one of them issuing out alive, Beatrix, who owed her 
deUverance to the Sicilian Vespers. King Charles i of 
Anjou had strengthened the place and often lived there, 
and we read that it was from these battlements that his 
daughter watched the naval battle in which her father's 
fleet was broken and her brother taken prisoner. She saw 
the two Sicilian galleys speed towards the fort, and it was 
she who heard Admiral Ruggiero Doria demand the sur- 
render of Manfred's daughter, her prisoner within. She 
refused ; but when he threatened to take her brother's life 
she surrendered Beatrix, who had spent eighteen years 
in her prison. 



28 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Castel deir Ovo was the favourite fortress of the Angevins. 
Robert the Wise brought Giotto from Florence to paint 
its chapel in fresco, nothing of which of course remains, 
and Charles iii of Durazzo in 1381 here kept King Robert's 
granddaughter, Giovanna i, prisoner, as she did him 
when her turn came. In 1495 Charles viii of France 
besieged and took the place, and Ferdinand 11 of Aragon 
in 1479 dismantled it. 

But it is really of none of these mighty or beautiful or 
infamous people we think when we look upon the Castel 
deir Ovo to-day, but of Rome ; of Lucullus, who had 
built his villa here upon the little island of Megaris — for it 
was an island — and whose gardens stretched so far over 
the shore and the hills ; of Cicero, who here met Brutus 
after the murder of Caesar in 44 B.C. ; most of all of Virgil, 
to whom, so it is said, the place owed its being, for he built 
it upon an egg anchored to the bottom of the sea, and 
so it shall stand until the egg be broken ; and a little of 
the last Emperor in the west, Romulus Augustulus, who 
is said here to have ended his days by leave of Odoacer 
the barbarian. 

To the west of the Pizzofalcone, upon the tip of which, 
as it were rising out of the waves, the Castel dell' Ovo 
stands, lies the Villa Nazionale, which is the Cascine or 
Villa Borghese of Naples, a pleasure-ground behind which 
lies the fashionable quarter and about which are the 
fashionable drives and promenades and in which stands the 
Aquarium, perhaps the finest and most various in the world, 
that no one must fail to visit whatever else is left unseen. 
To the east lies about the great harbour the city of Naples. 

Till yesterday between the Castel dell' Ovo and the 
Mola San Vincenzo the bay of S. Lucia opened, the 
fishermen's quarter, the most picturesque part of the 
city. This has, however, been filled in and a squalid 
quarter, the Rione S. Lucia, has been built, which it is 
anything but delightful to pass through. He who is 
wise, and is bent on exploration and has time for pleasure, 



PALAZZO REALE 29 

will do well, therefore, to climb up from the Castel dell' 
Ovo into the Strada Chiatamone, and, turning to the left 
westward, to make his way through the Piazza dei Martiri, 
the Strada S. Caterina, and the Chiaia, the last a narrow, 
characteristic, and crowded way over which passes the 
Strada Monte di Dio from the Pizzofalcone northward to 
S. Elmo by the Ponte di Chiaia. 

The Strada di Chiaia comes to an end in the Piazza 
S. Ferdinando, which may perhaps be considered as the 
nucleus of the modern city, for it is closed upon the east by 
the Palazzo Reale and the Teatro S. Carlo, behind which, 
reached by the narrow Strada S. Carlo, stands the Castel 
Nuovo and the long Piazza del Municipio, leading down 
to the Porto Militare and the Porto Mercantile. Out of 
it northward proceeds the Toledo, the greatest thorough- 
fare in Naples; to the south opens the fine Piazza del 
Plebiscito ; while from the west by the narrow Chiaia all 
the life of the new quarters on the Vomero comes into 
it to pass into the city. 

The Piazza del Plebiscito is the most finely ordered 
square in Naples. It is entirely closed on the east by the 
fagade of the Palazzo Reale, while opposite upon the 
west it is filled by the great semicircular colonnade and 
front of the nineteenth-century church of S. Francesco di 
Paolo. Upon the south stands the old Palace of the 
Prince of Salerno, now the Commandant's residence, 
while upon the north is the Prefettura. 

The Palazzo Reale, with its long fagade adorned with 
modern statues of Roger of Sicily, Frederick 11 of Hohen- 
staufen, Charles i of Anjou, Alfonso i of Aragon, Charles v 
the Emperor, Charles iii of Bourbon, Murat, and Victor 
Emmanuel, was begun in 1600 by the Spanish Viceroy, 
the Count de Lemos. The architect was Fontana, but 
his design has been spoiled by the fiUing up of the open 
arches and by other rebuildings and restorations. Within 
the impression is less cold, the staircase of white marble 
dating from 1651 being especially fine ; and the palace is 



30 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

worth the trouble of getting a permesso to visit it, if only 
because it contains a fine gallery of pictures with two 
masterpieces, the portrait of Pietro Luigi Famese by Titian, 
somewhat spoilt by repainting, and a fine portrait by 
Vandyck. 

Beside the Palace on the north, and characteristically 
joined to it by a gallery, stands the Teatro San Carlo, 
built by Charles iii of Bourbon in 1737. Within it has 
been entirely rebuilt after a fire in 1816, but it remains 
perhaps the largest opera-house in the world, its only 
rivals being those at Milan and Barcelona. Here many 
of the works of Pergolesi and Paesiello, of Rossini, Bellini 
and Donizetti, were heard for the first time. 

Following the way under the arcades in the Strada 
S. Carlo, where the public writers have their little tables, 
one comes to a fine garden on the right, and so past the 
Cast el Nuovo into the Piazza del Municipio, which slopes 
somewhat steeply down towards the sea. Here one gets 
perhaps the best view within the city of Vesuvius and of 
Castel S. Elmo and S. Martino on the noble hill over the 
city, things to which Naples owes so much of her reputa- 
tion for beauty. 

From the Piazza del Municipio we turn to the Castel 
Nuovo, the fortress that Charles of Anjou built in 1279 
by the hands perhaps of Pierre d'Agincourt, and that 
Alfonso of Aragon enlarged in 1442, as did Don Pedro de 
Toledo, the Spanish Viceroy, in 1546, and Charles iii of 
Bourbon in 1735. It was the fortress-palace of the kings 
of Naples from the time of the Angevins until the Count de 
Lemos in 1600 began the Palazzo Reale ; but its walls 
and ramparts have for the most part been destroyed, 
and from without the place does not impress us as it 
should. The entrance is from the Piazza del Municipio, 
and it is mean enough until we come to the Castle itself, 
where the glorious Triumphal Arch of Alfonso i of Aragon, 
built to commemorate his entry into Naples in 1442, stands 
before the gate. 



CASTEL NUOVO 31 

It was indeed with the advent of the House of Aragon 
that the art of the Renaissance took the place of the 
Gothic introduced by the House of Anjou. Alfonso of 
Aragon called to Naples the Florentine Giuliano da Majano, 
who in 1414 built the Porta Capuana ; but before then he 
had summoned from Milan Pietro di Martino, who first 
raised in Italy a monument in direct imitation of the 
antique, to wit this Triumphal Arch begun in 1453. This 
noble and beautiful work, the somewhat capricious com- 
position of which betrays the experimentalism of its 
builder, Pietro di Martino, is said to have been designed 
in the first instance by Francesco Laurana. It is richly 
adorned with sculptures and reliefs by various artists. 
The bronze doors were the work of a Frenchman, Guillaume 
Monaco, and are splendidly adorned with reliefs represent- 
ing the victories of Alfonso. In that on the left a cannon 
ball is embedded, a relic of the time of Gonsalvo da Cor- 
dova. 

In the courtyard within stands the church of S. Barbara, 
a work of Charles of Anjou, transformed in the end of the 
fifteenth century, as we see, when the beautiful early Re- 
naissance door was built by Francesco Laurana, who also 
made the lovely statue of the Madonna and Child above 
it. The best thing within the church is the view to be had 
from the balcony above the elaborate little chapel at the 
top of a flight of steps. 

On coming out of the Castel Nuovo he is wise who 
strolls down to the Porto and wanders along the quays 
crowded with shipping, the view dark with masts quite 
round the Porto Mercantile, built first in 1302 by Charles 
II of Anjou, as far as the Villa del Popolo and the Porta 
del Carmine. Nothing in Naples is more interesting than 
the life of the harbour, and no monument in the strait 
ways of the city more beautiful than these living ships 
moving and sighing against the quays, longing for the open 
sea. And if life will not content one, there is to the south 
beyond the Castel Nuovo and the Porto Militare the old 



32 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Arsenale di Marina and the Darsena erected and con- 
trived in 1577 by the Viceroy Don Inigo de Mendoza ; there 
is the Faro, founded in the fourteenth century at the end of 
the Molo Angoino ; and there is the Porto Piccolo, the repre- 
sentative perhaps of the Greek harbour of Neapohs ; while 
at the east end of the Port stands the Castel del Carmine, 
which Ferdinand i of Aragon built in 1484, which was 
seized by Masaniello when he led the revolt of the people 
in 1647, ^^^ which now has come to nothing — a military 
bakehouse. 

Close by the Castello is the Porta del Carmine, through 
which one re-enters the city and comes into perhaps the 
most famous of all the piazzas of Naples, the Piazza del 
Mercato, where Conradin, his knights and friends were 
slain by Charles of Anjou upon October 29, 1268, after 
the battle of Tagliacozzo, and where Masaniello began his 
rebellion in July 1647. 

Conradin was but seventeen when he died, and he was 
the last of the Hohenstaufen. His body was buried 
without pomp, and indeed secretly, behind the high altar 
in the church here, S. Maria del Carmine, which has so 
noble a tower, but now nothing else noble about it, for it 
was rebuilt in 1769. There may still be seen the inscrip- 
tion R. C. C, which is to say. Regis Conradini Corpus, the 
body of King Conradin. Over the spot where he and his 
friends were put to death there now stands a fountain, but 
of old this place was marked by a column of porphyry 
now in the sacristy of the little church of Santa Croce in 
the midst of the piazza. 

From the Castel del Carmine and the famous piazza one 
passes by the picturesque and characteristic Strada di 
Lavinaro or the broad Corso Garibaldi to the Castel Capu- 
ano and the great gate Porta Capuana close by. This 
fortress is as old as the Castel dell' Ovo, for it was founded 
by William I and completed by Frederick 11. It served 
as the residence of the Hohenstaufen in Naples, and was 
used by Charles of Anjou until the foundation of the Castel 




NAPLES : PORTA CARMINE 



THE ANGEVIN CHURCHES 33 

Nuovo. It remained the occasional residence of the 
Kings of Naples until in 1540 Don Pedro de Toledo, the 
Viceroy, made it the Palace of Justice, which it still re- 
mains. The Porta Capuana close by is not only the finest 
gate in Naples, but, being as it is the entry to the oldest 
and most crowded part of the city, affords such a spectacle 
of the life of the people as is not to be matched in the 
peninsula. The whole street within and without the gate 
is a continual fair and pandemonium of noise ; josthng 
carts, barrows, caravans of mules, herds of goats, ox- 
wagons, and innumerable companies of peasants throng 
in and out ; the fruiterers, the sellers of sheU-fish and of 
nauseous coloured sweet drinks, of pottery, of images and 
rosaries of every kind and sort, of sweetmeats and biscuits, 
of chestnuts and the unknowable deHcacies of the people, 
drive a furious trade accompanied by a universal yelling 
and gesticulation that in the dust and the blazing sun 
make certainly one of the most amazing sights the city 
affords. 

The great and beautiful gate was built in the end of the 
fifteenth century by Giuliano da Maiano for Ferdinand i 
of Aragon, whose arms still adorn it. By this way 
Charles v entered the city in 1535, when it was splendidly 
decorated with statues by Giovanni da Nola. 



The Angevin Churches 

From the Castel Capuano it is but a httle way down the 
broad Strada de' Tribunali to the Strada del Duomo in 
which upon the right stands the Duomo, the Cathedral 
church of Naples. This church originally dedicated in 
honour of the Madonna now bears the name of the patron 
of the city, S. Januarius, whose body lies in the Confessio 
beneath the high altar, and whose blood is conserved in two 
phials over the altar of the third chapel in the south aisle. 
3 



34 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

The church was begun in 1272 by Charles i of Anjou 
perhaps on the site of the Temples of Neptune and Apollo. 
His son, Charles 11, continued it, and his son again, Robert 
the Wise, completed it in 1323. The church was thus built 
by three generations of Angevin kings and in the Gothic 
style of France, having pointed arches upheld by columns of 
ancient marble from the Temples upon whose site it stands. 
The church of the Angevins was very badly damaged in 
1456 by an earthquake, and was unfortunately almost 
entirely rebuilt by Alfonso i of Aragon with the assistance 
of the greater Neapolitan families whose arms may be 
seen upon the pillars. Still more unfortunately in 1837 
the whole building was restored by Archbishop Giudice 
Caracciolo. 

The church, as we see it, is chiefly interesting, at any rate 
to us, on account of its monuments. Over the main door 
to the right is that of the founder of the Angevin dynasty, 
of the great Charles of Anjou. To the left is that of the 
eldest son of Charles 11, Charles Mart el, King of Hungary, 
and in the midst that of his wife, Clementina, daughter 
of Rudolph of Hapsburg. All three were erected in 1599 
by the Spanish Viceroy Olivarez. 

In the north transept lies that Andrew, King of Hungary, 
the first husband of Giovanna i. Queen of Naples, the grand- 
daughter of Robert the Wise. Close by are the tombs of 
two Popes — Innocent iv, who died here in Naples in 1254, 
and Innocent xii, who died in 1696 and was a Neapolitan. 

Apart from these tombs the church possesses really but 
little interest. In the second chapel in the north aisle 
there is an altarpiece of the Incredulity of S. Thomas by 
Marco da Siena, and beneath it a relief of the Entombment 
by Giovanni da Nola. In the fourth chapel in the same 
aisle is an Assumption of the Virgin asserted bj^ Vasari 
to be by Perugino, but obviously only from his workshop. 
It was commissioned by Cardinal Oliviero Carafa, and 
represents the Madonna in a mandorla with two angels 
above placing a crown upon her head while others make 



S. JANUARIUS 35 

music about her. Beneath the twelve Apostles and S. 
Paul stand in worship, while to the left are Cardinal Carafa 
presented by S. Januarius. 

Cardinal Carafa had a very great devotion to this saint, 
the patron of Naples. To contain the body of S. Januarius 
brought from S. Gennaro dei Poveri upon the slope of 
Capodimonte in 1497, he caused to be built the exquisitely 
lovely chapel of the Confessio, which is upheld by beautiful 
ancient columns of marble. There we see not only the 
tomb of the saint, made by Tommaso Malvito of Como, 
but the kneeling figure of the Cardinal beside it made by the 
same master. Above, Domenichino has painted in fresco 
angels in adoration. Nor is this the only shrine of the 
saint in this church. In the third chapel in the south 
aisle is the Cappella del Tesoro erected by the Neapolitans 
ill 1608 in fulfilment of a vow made in 1527 during the 
plague. In this too gorgeous sanctuary, which is said to 
have cost a quarter of a million sterling, the blood of S. 
Januarius is conserved in two phials in the tabernacle over 
the high altar, and is said to liquefy twice in the year. 
This popular event, which would seem to have extra- 
ordinary significance in the eyes of the Neapolitans, occurs 
in May and September. Upon the first Saturday in May 
the phials containing the blood are carried in procession 
to the Church of S. Chiara. There the liquefaction begins, 
and the phials having been conveyed back to the Cathedral, 
the miracle is repeated in the mother church during some 
seven days. Upon the 19th September, the Feast of S. 
Januarius, the blood begins to liquefy again, but this time 
in the Cathedral, and continues to do so during the octave. 

S. Januarius is said to have been thrown to the lions 
in the amphitheatre of Pozzuoli in the first years of the 
fourth century. The beasts, however, would not touch 
him, so his captors led him away to Solfatara, where he 
was beheaded. The body was buried at Pozzuoli, but was 
removed in the time of Constantine to the sanctuary at 
the mouth of the Catacombs, which now bears the name of 



36 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

the martyr S. Gennaro de' Poveri. Later, during the 
Saracen raids the body was borne away to Benevento, 
where S. Januarius had been bishop, and in the time of 
Frederick ii it was taken to Monte Vergine, near AveUino, 
whence Cardinal Carafa in 1497 brought it to Naples and 
laid the body in the tomb he had prepared for it here in 
the Conf essio. 

The church is full of fine tombs besides those I have 
named, and in the Minutoli chapel in the south transept, 
a Gothic work of the fourteenth century, there is beside 
some fine works of this sort a beautiful triptych over the 
altar by Paolo di Giovanni Fei of Siena, a Crucifixion with 
Saints. And close by in the Cappella Tocca is the tomb of 
S. Asprenas, an early bishop of Naples. 

The Cathedral, however, in spite of its tombs is a curiously 
uninteresting building. Far more attractive in itself is 
the old church of S. Restituta, originally the Cathedral, 
and, though sadly restored, still dating from the seventh 
century, which we enter from the north aisle of the Duomo 
upon payment of a small fee. This is a basilica with 
pointed arches, said to occupy the site of the old Temple of 
Apollo. As we see it, it is a restoration of the seventeenth 
century, but it still contains an interesting fourteenth- 
century mosaic of Our Lady with SS. Januarius and 
Restituta in the chapel at the end of the north aisle, and 
two parts of an altar screen of the twelfth century, each 
containing fifteen reliefs, of the life of S. Januarius, of 
Joseph, of Samson, and S. George. Something older than 
the seventh-century church itself would seem to remain to 
us in the Baptistery, which appears to date from the fifth 
century. Here we may see some restored mosaics, fifth- 
century works, of Our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, and the 
Four Evangelists. 

It was Charles of Anjou himself who founded the Duomo 
of Naples, as he did more than one other church in the 
city, as we shall see. Before passing on to examine them, 
we may glance at a little desecrated sanctuary close to the 



S. LORENZO 37 

Duomo, the church of S. Maria Donna Regina founded by 
Maria of Hungary (1308), the consort of Charies 11 of 
Anjou. The old church was deserted in the seventeenth 
century when a new one was built, and is now a Museum — 
the Museo Donna Regina. In the seventeenth- century 
church we find the tomb of the founderess to the left of 
the high altar, a fourteenth-century work by Tino di 
Camaino ; but in the old sanctuary, now the museum, we 
find some magnificent frescoes ascribed to Pietro Cavallini 
painted to the order of Charles 11, which no one should fail 
to see. Like the works by the same master at Rome, 
these frescoes are very much damaged, but no one can 
doubt that they are largely from Cavallini's hand, doubtless 
assisted by pupils. Here are fragments of scenes from the 
Apocalypse, with figures in pairs above between, palm 
trees, of Prophets and Saints which remind us of Byzantine 
mosaics. There we see SS. Stephen, Laurence, Joseph, 
Peter, Elias, Thomas, and others. Farther on, we find 
on the left fifteen scenes from the Passion of Christ and 
five from the life of S. Elizabeth of Hungary. Opposite 
are many spoiled scenes from the lives of S. Agnes and 
S. Catherine. Over the triumphal arch of the sanctuary 
we see the hierarchy of angels, while on the entrance wall 
is the Last Judgment. 

From S. Maria Donna Regina one turns back past the 
Duomo, and coming into the Strada de' Tribunali turns 
left so far as the church of S. Lorenzo. 

S. Lorenzo was a refoundation of Charles i of Anjou, 
and though the church has been largely rebuilt, the choir 
and the doorway still remain to us from his time. There, 
too, in the seventh chapel on the right we may see a 
precious work by Simone Martini, the Coronation of King 
Robert the Wise, grandson of Charles of Anjou, by S. Louis 
of Toulouse, painted about 1317, a very noble and lovely 
thing. Below in the predella, also from Simone's hand, 
we see five small scenes of the life of the saint. This 
chapel also contains some early frescoes much in 



38 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Simone's style. The church boasts, too, of other paintings, 
perhaps by Simone Napoletano, in the chapels of the 
north and south transepts. They represent S. Anthony 
and S. Francis, for this was a Franciscan sanctuary, to 
which order the Angevin house was, of course, devoted, 
since it had produced two Franciscan saints. 

Behind the high altar we come upon the Angevin tombs. 
There are three monuments of Catherine of Austria (d.1333), 
the first wife of Charles, Duke of Calabria, the son of 
Robert the Wise, of Johanna of Durazzo (d. 1393) and her 
husband, Robert d'Artois (d. 1383), and of Charles i of 
Durazzo, who was executed at Aversa in 1348 for the 
murder of Andrew of Hungary. Close by lies the two-year- 
old daughter of Charles iii. 

So much for the Angevins. For, after all, the Franciscan 
church of S. Lorenzo has another and a greater interest 
for us than the fact that they founded it and there lie 
buried. It was here that Boccaccio first saw Fiammetta 
on the vigil of Easter in the year 1331 or 1336.^ He had 
gone to Mass, it seems, about ten o'clock in the morning, 
the fashionable hour of the day, rather to see the people 
than to attend the service, and there amid the great throng 
of all sorts and conditions of men he first caught sight 
of the woman who was so profoundly to influence his life 
and shape his work. '' I found myself," he says, " in a 
fine church of Naples, named after him who endured to 
be offered as a sacrifice upon the gridiron, and there was 
a singing compact of sweetest melody. I was listening 
to the Holy Mass celebrated by a priest, successor to him 
who first girt himself humbly with the cord, exalting 
poverty and adopting it (S. Francis). Now, while I 
stood there, the fourth hour of the day, according to my 
reckoning, having already passed down the eastern sky, 
there appeared to my eyes the wondrous beauty of a young 
woman come hither to hear what I too heard attentively. 
I had no sooner seen her than my heart began to throb so 
* See my Giovanni Boccaccio (Lane, 1910), p. 27 ef seq. 



S. CHIARA 39 

strongly that I felt it in my slightest pulses ; and not 
knowing why, nor yet perceiving what had happened, I 
began to say, * Ohime, what is this ? . . / But at 
length, being unable to sate myself with gazing, I said, 
' O Lord, most noble Lord, whose strength not even the 
gods were able to resist, I thank thee for setting happiness 
before my eyes ! . . .' I had no sooner said these 
words than the flashing eyes of that lovely lady fixed 
themselves on mine. . . ." Thus began that bitter 
romance to which we owe so much of Boccaccio's work. 

Not far fromS. Lorenzo, at the end of Stradade' Tribunah, 
is the church of S. Pietro a Macella, built by the favourite 
of Charles ii of Anjou, Giovanni Pipino di Barbetta. He 
died in 1316, and is buried in his church in the left transept ; 
but to-day one cannot visit his tomb, for the church is 
closed, and about to be destroyed. From this threatened 
sanctuary we may pass on the left past the church of S, 
Domenico, which Charles 11 refounded, but which is full 
of Aragon tombs, into the Largo di S. Domenico, and so 
by the Strade S. Trinita to the vast Church of S. Chiara. 

This is a true Angevin sanctuary, a Franciscan church, 
a French building in which behind the high altar, beneath 
a magnificent Gothic monument, King Robert the Wise 
lies buried. The vast affair towers some forty-two feet 
into the air, and is the work of Pace and Giovanni da 
Firenze. The King, who like all his house was a great 
patron of the Franciscan Order, is represented in effigy 
dressed in the habit of a Friar Minor lying upon a sarco- 
phagus adorned with reliefs. Angels draw aside the 
curtains which hang about the figure, and above towers a 
huge canopy, over which in a niche the King appears seated 
on his throne in his majesty. There Petrarch wrote the 
inscription : '' Cemite Robertum regem virtute refertum." 
On either side are frescoes by some pupil of Giotto's. 

Close by this magnificent tomb, in the south transept, 
lies King Robert's eldest son, Charles, Duke of Calabria, 
who died before his father in 1328. This beautiful tomb 



40 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

is the work of Tino di Camaino of Siena. To the right, in 
another fine tomb, Hes Charles' second wife, Mary of Valois. 

Upon the other side of King Robert, in the north tran- 
sept, hes in another fine tomb his granddaughter, Mary, 
daughter of Charles, Duke of Calabria, in her imperial robes 
as Empress of Constantinople. Beside her are her two 
daughters, Agnes and Clementia, and beside them two 
children, a daughter and a grandson of Charles of Calabria. 
All these tombs are of the fourteenth century and of the 
House of Anjou. 

Beside these French Princes in a chapel in the south 
transept many of the last princely house of Naples are 
buried, for it is the Bourbon chantry. Apart from these 
Angevin tombs, S. Chiara has now little interest. Once it 
possessed frescoes by Giotto, so Vasari tells us, for Boccaccio 
persuaded King Robert to bring the master to Naples, 
and here he set to work to cover the Angevin chapel, and 
indeed the whole church, with his work. Nothing at all, 
however, remains to-day, except the small Madonna delle 
Grazie on a pillar to the left of the nave. 

To the left of the entrance to the church in a fine tomb, 
under a fresco by Francesco di Simone Napoletano of the 
Madonna enthroned with the Blessed Trinity, lies the 
secretary of King Ladislaus, the son of Charles iii of 
Durazzo. Here Baboccio carved a relief of the Madonna 
and Child with certain friars. 

Before the organ the masters of the tomb of King Robert 
have carved in relief eleven scenes from the life of S. 
Catherine. It is possible that they also made the reliefs 
in the pulpit. 

We have thus seen the tombs and monuments of the 
first three Angevin princes : Charles i and Charles ii 
lie in the Duomo, King Robert the Wise lies in S. Chiara ; 
the church of the Incoronata belongs to King Robert's 
granddaughter and heir, the famous Giovanna, Queen of 
Naples. 

Charles ii of Anjou had built here the Cappella di 



THE INCORONATA 41 

Giustizia, and there Giovanna was married to her second 
husband, Louis of Taranto, in 1347. To commemorate this 
event and her later coronation,^ and perhaps to appease 
Heaven for the murder of her first husband, Andrew of 
Hungary, the beautiful Queen founded the church of the 
Incoronata, in which was incorporated the old Cappella 
di Giustizia. The church is well below the present level 
of the street, the Strada Medina, in which it stands, and 
though nluch of it has been spoilt it still retains its fine 
old roof and several Gothic chapels. Here in the groined 
vaults of the choir, and best seen from the staircase on the 
left, are frescoes of the middle of the fourteenth century, 
representing the Seven Sacraments of the Church. In 
the Marriage we may think to see the portrait of Giovanna, 
while in the Baptism, it is said, we see portraits of Petrarch 
and Laura, but this is obviously ridiculous. Close by is 
the apotheosis of S. Louis of Toulouse, with portraits of 
King Robert and his son Charles, the grandfather and 
father of the Queen. Who painted these works ? It is 
possible we may never know ; they might seem to be the 
work of some local master who had felt the influence both 
of Giotto and Simone Martini, perhaps that Robertus di 
Oderisio of whom Crowe and Cavalcaselle were the first 
to tell us. 

In the Cappella del Crocefisso, at the end of the left 
aisle, are other somewhat similar paintings, attributed to 
Gennaro di Cola, a very feeble master. They represent 
again the marriage of Queen Giovanna, and other events 
of her so various life, that life full of beauty and lust and 
crime, which ended so brutally at the Castle of Muro, 
where in 1382 she was suffocated by order of Charles iii 
of Durazzo, who had seized her kingdom. 

Neither Queen Giovanna nor her successor and murderer, 
Charles iii of Durazzo, lie in Naples ; but Ladislaus, who 
reigned from 1386 to 1414, whose favourite, Guerello 

^ The coronation did not take place here, it would seem, but in the 
Palace of the Princes of Taranto, near Castel Nuovo, and this in 1352. 



42 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Origlia, founded Monte Oliveto, lies in S. Giovanni a Car- 
bonara, which Queen Giovanna had begun in 1344. 

This church Hes quite on the other side of Naples from 
the Incoronata, near the Porta Capuana. Its chief 
treasure, if not its only one, is the magnificent monument 
of King Ladislaus, which his successor, the infamous 
Giovanna 11, his sister, built in his honour behind the 
high altar. There he is buried in a sarcophagus upon 
which, in imitation of that of King Robert, he hes in 
effigy, receiving the benediction of a bishop, for the ex- 
communication of the Pope was only removed after his 
death. Above stands a fine equestrian statue of the 
king ; beneath we see him and his sister, while the tomb 
itself is supported by statues representing the four cardinal 
virtues. 

This tomb is the work of Andrea de Florentia, who 
perhaps also made the tomb in the Cappella del Sole 
behind it, in which Giovanna ii's favourite, the Grand 
Seneschal Ser Giovanni Caracciolo, lies. Another tomb 
by the same master is in the Congregazione di S. Monica 
close by. It holds the dust of Ferdinando di Sanseverino> 
and dates from 1432. The two later chapels of the Carac- 
cioli are worth examining, if only for the sixteenth-century 
sculpture there. 

Giovanna 11, who raised so splendid a tomb for her brother 
and predecessor upon the throne of Naples, herself, for all 
her splendour and luxury, hes in an unpretending grave. 
This stands before the high altar in the SS. Annunziata, 
which Robert the Wise had built in 1316, but which was 
rebuilt in the eighteenth century. She was the last of 
the Angevins to lie in Naples, and seven years after her 
death her house ceased to hold the Kingdom. 

Undoubtedly the noblest work of art, dating from her 
reign in Naples, is the glorious monument of Cardinal 
Brancacci by Donatello and Michelozzo in S. Angelo a 
Nilo. It consists of a sarcophagus borne by three figures ; 
upon this hes the effigy of the Cardinal, and on either side 



THE ARAGON CHURCHES 43 

stand angels drawing aside the curtains. In front is a 
glorious relief of the Assumption from the hand of Dona- 
tello, and above a relief of the Virgin. This is the finest 
work of art left to us in Naples outside the Museums. 



VI 

The Aragon Churches 

The Angevins had stamped Naples with a Gothic 
character in the noble churches they built; it was the 
Aragon house that brought in the Renaissance. 

Nothing more splendid is to be found in Naples than 
the early Renaissance Triumphal Arch of the Castel 
Nuovo which Alfonso i caused to be built, but the tombs 
of the house are disappointing. 

The Angevins had patronized and supported the 
Franciscan Order, and for the most part lie in glorious 
tombs in Franciscan sanctuaries. It was the Dominicans 
that the House of Aragon favoured. 

The church of S. Domenico had been erected in 1287 in 
the Gothic style by Charles 11 of Anjou. It has been much 
rebuilt and restored, but it remains one of the nobler 
churches of the city, of very great size and some splendour. 
Here in the sacristy, in ten large wooden sarcophagi covered 
with velvet, lie the Princes of the House of Aragon, 
Ferdinand i, Ferdinand 11, and others of their house. In 
the north transept lie Giovanni di Durazzo and Filippo di 
Taranto, the sons of Charles 11 of Anjou. The church is 
fuU of the sixteenth- century monuments of the most 
famous Neapolitan families, and there are several works 
by Giovanni da Nola. But apart from its tombs of the 
House of Aragon, its chief interest for me at least lies in 
its monastery, once the house of the Angelical Doctor S. 
Thomas Aquinas. Here he lived in 1272, when he lectured 
at the University, to the wonder of Italy and the delight 
of the great Charles of Anjou, who came to hear him. His 



44 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

little cell, now a much overcrowded little chapel, is 
shown. 

Perhaps the best Aragon tomb in Naples is to be seen in 
the Benedictine church of Monte Oliveto. Here behind 
the high altar, in a fine tomb by Giovanni da Nola, 
Alfonso II of Aragon lies, while in the first chapel on the 
left is a beautiful altar by Antonio Rossellino of Florence, 
with charming reliefs of the Nativity and the Four 
Evangelists, and there lies Maria of Aragon, the natural 
daughter of Ferdinando i. This is also a work of 
Rossellino' s, and is a copy of his masterpiece in S. Miniato 
at Florence, the tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal. He did 
not live to complete Maria of Aragon's tomb, which was 
finished by Benedetto da Majano. The whole church is 
typically Aragonese, and almost a museum of the work 
they patronized in the sixteenth century. 

But the tombs of the House of Aragon in Naples are but 
poor things in comparison with those of the House of 
Anjou, nor is their influence architecturally upon the city 
comparable at all with that of their predecessors. Some 
few fine things Naples owes to them, such as the Triumphal 
Arch, the rebuilding of the Cast el del Carmine, the Porta 
Capuana, and indeed all the gates, but few churches and 
few monuments. Greater benefits indeed were bestowed 
upon Naples by the Spanish viceroys than by the House of 
Aragon. 

The first of these viceroys, the famous Gonzalvo da 
Cordova, II Gran Capitano, built the great chapel of S. 
Giacomo della Marca in the church of S. Maria Nuova, and 
his nephew, Ferdinand, Duke of Sueca, raised upon either 
side the high altar there, monuments to the memory of 
his most formidable enemies, Pietro Navarro, who hanged 
himself in the Castel Nuovo, and Lautrec, the general of 
Francis i, who besieged Naples in 1528, and died of plague 
before he took the city. 

But undoubtedly the finest monument that the viceroys 
left in Naples, if not the noblest relic of Spanish rule here, 



THE MUSEO NAZIONALE 45 

is the great thoroughfare of the Toledo, now so absurdly 
called the Via Roma. This was the work of the great 
Pedro de Toledo (1532-1554). He lies in a very gorgeous 
tomb in S. Giacomo degli Spagnuoli, which is also due 
to him, in the Piazza del Municipio. It is a work of the 
famous school of Giovanni da Nola. The Viceroy and his 
wife are seen kneeling upon an enormous sarcophagus 
covered with reliefs ; at the angles are four allegorical 
figures. The work is exquisitely wrought, but decadent 
in its over- elaboration and lack of simplicity. That tomb 
and church are indeed but the forerunners of such unquiet 
sanctuaries as the Gesu Nuovo, S. Paolo Maggiore, and S. 
Filippo Neri. 

They serve with the Palazzo Reale, however, and the 
great Carthusian monastery of S. Martino and the Palazzo 
di Capodimonte, begun by Charles iii in 1738, with its fine 
Goyas, portraits of Charles iv and his consort, to mark 
the Spanish dominion, as S. Carlo, built in 1737, and S. 
Francesco da Paola, built in imitation of the Pantheon by 
Ferdinand iv, and the Municipio, built by Francis i, mark 
the rule of the Bourbons. They at least have some char- 
acter of their own, but what are we to say of the buildings 
of our own time, the Galleria in the Toledo and the numerous 
statues of Garibaldi, Victor Emmanuel, and Umberto i, 
that represent in Naples the dominion of Savoy and the 
unity of Italy ? 

VII 
The Museo Nazionale 

My happiest hours in Naples have always been those 
spent in the two Museums of the place, the great 
Museo Nazionale in the city itself and the Museo di San 
Martino, the old Carthusian monastery upon the height 
of S. Elmo, where after all the only thing to be seen is the 
view ; but that beggars description. 

The Museo Nazionale has not the wonderful environment 



46 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

of the monastery of S. Martino. The vast building in the 
Piazza Cavour, begun by Fontana in 1586, in the time of 
the Viceroy, the Duke of Osuna, was built for a cavalry 
barracks, but, left uncompleted for more than twenty 
years, was given by the Conde de Lemos to the University, 
and in 1616 was known as the Regii Studii. When the 
Palazzo Tribunali was rendered unsafe by the earthquake 
of 1688 it was used for a time as the law court of Naples, 
and only in the Revolution of 1701 did it serve its original 
purpose of a barracks. It again came into the hands of 
the University in 1767, when it was arranged as a Museum, 
and in 1790 King Ferdinand iv removed the royal collec- 
tions to it from Capodimonte and Portici. The Museum 
indeed owes a great deal to the Bourbons, who continually 
enriched it with treasures, though claiming everything, 
and rightly, as their own private property. They called it 
the Museo Reale Borbonico ; but when in i860 Garibaldi 
became the very helpless dictator of Naples that he 
proved to be, he proclaimed the Museum national property, 
and this was confirmed later by Victor Emmanuel. 

The greatest treasures of the Museum thus established 
are to-day the antiquities from Pompeii, from Paestum, 
and the cities of Magna Grsecia, the bronzes from Her- 
culaneum, and a few works in marble, genuine masterpieces 
of Greek art, which most happily have found here a secure, 
if gloomy, home. 

It is easiest to visit first the collection of marble sculp- 
tures where, amid a vast mass of work of the time of the 
Empire, for the most part copies, as in the Vatican and the 
Capitoline Museums, of lost Greek originals, may be found 
a few works from the hands of the Greeks themselves. 

Though in such a great collection as this he is wise who 
confines himself to the best of all, it is impossible to pass 
by certain works which greet us even in the first room, the 
Portico dei Mami Arcaici, copies though they be. Those 
noble figures of Harmodius and Aristogeitus, the two 
Athenian youths who slew the tyrant Hipparchus, and 




TORSO DI VENERE 

Micseo Nazioiiale, Naples 



THE MARBLES 47 

sacrificed their lives for the good of the state ; it is im- 
possible to pass them by without a salute, though these 
figures are but fine copies of those carved by Critics and 
Nesiotes, and re-erected by the Athenian people after the 
two earlier statues carved by Antenor had been carried off 
by Xerxes. 

One may pass by the Famese gladiator, however — it is 
but the copy of a copy — but the statuette of Artemis in the 
same room (6008) comes from Pompeii, and the colour is 
still on it. It is a small but fine copy of the chryselephan- 
tine statue of the end of the sixth century, and was brought 
to Italy from Calydon by Augustus after the battle of 
Actium. 

The adjoining rooms are full of fine copies — the bust of 
Athene, the beautiful Aphrodite in a clinging transparent 
robe, the majestic so-called Juno Famese, the poor Dory- 
phorus from Pompeii ; it is not indeed till you enter the 
seventh room that you come to an original Greek work, 
the exquisite relief of Orpheus, Eurydice, and Hermes 
(6727), replicas of which are in the Louvre and the Villa 
Albani at Rome. This is one of the loveHest things in 
Naples, an almost untouched work of the fourth century 
B.C., perfect alike in beauty and quietness. 

As much cannot be said for the Head of Apollo (6393), 
fine though it be, for it has been spoilt by polish and re- 
storation, nor for the Athena (6024), which is but a poor 
copy after Pheidias, as is the Bust of the Bearded Dionysos 
(6306) after Praxiteles. We come upon something better, 
however, in the so-called Banquet of Icarius (6713), a 
genuine Greek work, in which we see Dionysos appearing 
to some victorious poet, while the splendid technique of 
the torso of a man in the next room redeems it from the 
mediocrity of most copies. The glorious torso of Aphrodite 
(6035) by the window is of the most tender beauty. 

I know not what to say of the Famese Hercules, nor of 
the various works in the small rooms adjoining that in 
which it stands, the statuettes of the Pergamenian school 



48 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

and the Venus Callipyge ; they mean nothing to me. 
Before them all I prefer that lovely relief of the Persuasion 
of Helen, a true Greek work, in which Aphrodite tries so 
hard to persuade Helen to follow Paris, while Eros stands 
by helpless, and Peitho, as a dove, waits with certainty the 
decision of her for whom Troy must fall. 

In the Museum of Naples one wanders as in a city, 
caught here by something beautiful, there by the face of 
a friend, now by something familiar, now by something 
strange. Not the least delightful rooms, indeed, are 
those devoted to the Greek and Roman Portraits, the 
Portico Iconografico, and the Portico degli Imperatori. 
Undoubtedly the finest of all these is the beautiful herma 
of a Greek Philosopher in the middle of the latter room ; 
indeed, there is no finer portrait bust in the world. With 
it, though not so fine, may be compared the noble 
bearded Hermes (6155), and also in the first room the 
splendid statue of iEschines (6018), the champion of Philip 
of Macedon against Demosthenes, from Herculaneum, the 
copy of an ideal portrait of Homer (6023), the Lycurgus (?) 
(6136), and another (6132), the Sophocles (?) (6139), the 
headless portrait statue, a very noble thing in the middle 
of the room, and the Philetaerus of Pergamum (6148). 
Of the Roman portraits in the second room undoubtedly 
the finest is the bust of Cahgula (6033). 

In going from the Portico degli Imperatori to the 
Sculture di Bronzo we pass through eight rooms full of 
indifferent works, but in the fourth is the splendid mosaic 
of the Battle of Alexander, which comes from the House 
of the Faun in Pompeii. It represents the Battle of the 
Issus at that moment when Alexander charges the Persians 
at the head of his cavalry. It is a fine thing, and reminds 
us of a great episode in the history of Europe. 

It is not in marbles but in bronzes, however, that the 
Museum here in Naples is pre-eminent. These come for 
the most part from Pompeii and Herculaneum, the former 
being of a Hght green, almost blue, colour, the latter of a 



THE BRONZES 49 

very dark and sober green, owing not to any difference of 
material but to the totally different volcanic substance in 
which they were hidden for so long. Of the five rooms 
full of bronzes the first two are devoted to those from 
Pompeii. Undoubtedly the finest of these Pompeian 
treasures is the archaic statue of Apollo playing a lyre 
(5630) which comes from the Casa del Citrasta, so named 
after it at Pompeii. It is perhaps the most beautiful 
work of art in the Museum, a masterpiece of the first half 
of the fifth century B.C. It originally stood in the market- 
place of Sparta, and is one of the noblest things left to us 
by that great people. 

The Apollo stands in the second room ; in the first is 
the famous bronze statuette of the bearded and tailed 
Dancing Faun (5002), which comes from the House of the 
Faun, so named after it, at Pompeii. Close by is the equally 
delightful Silenus crowned with ivy, the base adorned 
with the vine and inlaid with silver (5001), and the young 
Satyr with a wine-skin (iii, 495), drunken and staggering, 
a figure for a fountain discovered in Pompeii in 1880. In 
the middle of the room is the so-called Narcissus, properly 
perhaps a Dionysos, twenty-five inches in height, a master- 
piece of Praxiteles' school. The grave and sleepy beauty 
of this delicious figure is beyond description. Restoration 
has done its worst here, but with httle effect, though the 
pose is no longer the one designed by the sculptor and the 
empty eyes were once filled with silver. 

The glory of the second room, and indeed of the Museum 
itself, is, as I have said, the archaic Apollo with a lyre (5630), 
but here too is the charming winged Victory (4997), a gold 
bracelet upon her left arm, and the interesting statuette of 
a Boy, a poor but genuine work of the fifth century B.C. 

The third, fourth, and fifth rooms are devoted to the 
deep-toned bronzes from Herculaneum, the finest and 
loveliest of which is the fifth- century Head of a Boy (5633). 
More famous and exceedingly lovely is the Hermes in Repose 
(5625), perhaps the most celebrated work of art in Naples, 
4 



50 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

discovered in Herculaneum in 1858, a work of the school of 
Lysippus. Everything in this room is worth notice, but 
to the two works I have named I must add for dehght the 
two busts (4885 and 5618), the first the only signed bust of 
antiquity, the work of the Athenian ApoUonius, son of 
Archias, a copy of the famous Doryphoros of Polycletus, 
the second the glorious head of Dionysos in meditation, a 
copy of a work of Myron's. 

The fourth and fifth rooms have nothing so lovely as 
any of these works I have named. The best to be had in 
the fourth room is the Wrestlers (5626-5627) and the 
merry Drunken Satyr (5628), while in the fifth room there 
is nothing else so fine as the beautiful head of L. Calpurnius 
Piso Cesoninus, formerly called Seneca, unless it be the 
head of a woman (4896) called Sappho, a rarely lovely 
thing of the fourth century B.C. 

Upon the first floor of the Museum in the east wing are 
six rooms filled with small bronzes, many of them of con- 
siderable beauty and interest, the collection as a whole 
being without a rival anywhere. 

To the left of the landing between the two staircases 
leading to the rooms of the upper story are ten halls con- 
taining wall-paintings for the most part from Pompeii 
with some few from Herculaneum and Stabiae. These 
delightful paintings are scarcely the work of artists, but 
rather of artisans ; they are decorative works which 
lightened the walls of the little houses of Pompeii, and 
would seem to assure us of the happiness and light-hearted- 
ness of a society which could produce and enjoy such things, 
full as they are of a naive delight. Consider the beauty, 
the dignity, the daintiness of such a decoration as that in 
which Briseis is led away from the tent of Achilles (9105), 
or that in which Chiron is teaching the great hero the 
lyre (9109), or the Wedding of Zeus and Hera (9559), 
or that happy scene called Pan and the Nymphs (iii, 473). 
A more serious beauty is perhaps to be found in those 
paintings, six in all, on white marble in one of which Latona 




APOLLO 

Miiseo Xasiotiale, Xaples 



THE MURAL PAINTINGS 51 

prepares to destroy the Niobids, little unconcerned children 
playing all unaware of their dreadful fate. 

The works in the second room seem all to possess this 
hint of tragedy : there we see Orestes and Pylades as 
captives before Thoas and Iphigeneia coming out of the 
temple towards them (9111) ; and Medea about to murder 
her little children (9976) ; and less sombre, but not less 
fair, Dionysos and his company, among whom is Ariadne 
sleeping (9286) and Heracles with Omphale and Priapus 
(8992). 

The third and fourth rooms are full of similar if less 
beautiful pictures, the best of which is perhaps that in 
which we see Dionysos and Ariadne (9278) ; and the fifth 
room is crowded with famous things — the Loves for Sale 
(9180) on the threshold, and the no less well-known figures 
of the Bacchantes and Satyrs floating as in a frieze in their 
wild dance (9295-9307). Close by are the four centaurs 
and a Maenad (9133-9136), the story of the Loves (9176- 
9179), in which we see them hunting, fishing, playing, and 
working. These come from Herculaneum, and have 
nothing to do with the Loves for Sale (9180), exquisite 
in its pretty sentiment, which comes from Stabise. Last 
of all are the pictures of the Rope Dancers (9118-9121), 
in which we see Satyrs performing feats on the tight- rope. 

These delightful paintings show us in some sort perhaps 
the art of painting in antiquity at its culminating point ; 
but it must be remembered that they come from an un- 
important provincial city, and that they are but decorations 
after all, not individual works of art, which were certainly 
of a finer design and a more delicate finish than anything 
we have here in Naples. For the most part, no doubt, these 
works are conventional ; they follow great Greek designs 
as far as their authors were able, designs learned by heart 
and repeated over and over again with more or less exact- 
ness. In any case, they have a delight all their own, and 
though they can never mean to us what the architecture 
and sculpture of their time must always do, they give us 



52 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

a most intimate insight into the everyday Hves of a people 
who seem to have been always of a light heart and filled 
with a curious pleasure in beauty of any sort, that we have 
long since failed to attain to or to understand. 



VII 

The Picture Gallery 

The Pinacoteca of the Naples Museum, though it does 
not rival in wealth of masterpieces the galleries of 
Florence, Siena, Venice, or the Vatican, is nevertheless an 
important gallery of paintings only second to these in the 
peninsula. 

The Neapolitan school of painting, in so far as it was a 
native school, never came to have much importance. The 
Angevin kings, perhaps because there was little or no 
native talent, patronized the Florentine and Sienese 
masters, Giotto and Simone Martini ; the Spaniards, too, 
often looked to the Netherlands or to Spain itself for their 
pictures ; and thus without patronage the Neapolitan people 
produced no native school properly so called. And indeed, 
with few exceptions, it may be said that every picture 
painted in the Kingdom was the work of a foreigner, 
or at any rate painted under foreign influence. Thus when 
we find in the first room of the Naples Gallery the works 
of Andrea da Salerno (c. 1480-1543) — the Miracle of S. 
Nicholas of Bari, and the Adoration of the Magi, for in- 
stance — it is necessary to remember that though he worked 
in Naples and died at Gaeta, he was bom in Bologna, and 
was therefore not a south Italian at all. He was, however, 
the master of a native-born painter, that Criscuolo whose 
works are still to be seen in the churches of Naples, in 
S. Maria Donna Regina, for instance, whose younger 
brother, Giovanni Angelo, the pupil of Marco di Pino da 
Siena, has a picture here in the gallery, an Adoration of the 
Magi. These were painters, however, of the early sixteenth 



THE PICTURE GALLERY 53 

century. Of earlier masters we know very little. The 
S. Jerome extracting a thorn from the paw of a lion 
in the first room (84480, Sala iii) was long attributed to a 
certain Colantonio del Fiore, a half-mythical Neapolitan 
master, but is now given to the school of Roger Van der 
Weyden ; and indeed most of these early so-called Neapolitan 
paintings are the work of foreigners in the pay of the 
Angevins. 

The best of the later masters of which Naples boasts 
was Luca Giordano, a painter of the seventeenth century ; 
several of his works are to be found here in the Naples 
Gallery, but they have little interest for us. Indeed, in so 
far as painting was practised in Naples at this time, it 
owed everything to such foreigners as Ribera, whose son 
Sebastian painted in 165 1 two pictures of S. Jerome and a 
S. Bruno, which redeem from hopeless mediocrity Sala xvii 
of this gallery. But Ribera cannot be claimed by Naples 
as a native master any more than can El Greco, whose two 
fine works, a portrait of Giulio Clovio and a Boy with a 
firebrand, are among the best things to be found here. 

But if the Gallery of Naples can show us but few and 
mediocre works of the native masters, and that for the 
excellent reason that they do not exist, it can boast of a 
respectable collection of the works of every other school 
in Italy, not a few of which are masterpieces. 

To begin with Florence : the only fourteenth-century 
picture here is a smaU altarpiece by Taddeo Gaddi, 
painted in 1336, representing the Madonna and Child ; but 
the two great masters of the beginning of the fifteenth 
century, Masolino and Masaccio, are well represented, the 
former by two works painted about 1423, the Assumption 
of the Blessed Virgin (84186) and the Founding of S. 
Maria Maggiore (84195), and the latter by a fine Crucifixion 
(125489), both in Sala xv. An early work by Amico di 
Sandro, the Madonna and Child and Two Angels (84193), 
of old attributed to Botticelli, brings us to Filippino Lippi, 
from whose hand there is an early Annunciation with S. 



54 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

John Baptist and S. Andrew (84198) in the same room, 
while by his pupil Raffaelino del Garbo there is a tondo, 
a Madonna and Child with the infant S. John (84209) 
close by. Andrea del Sarto contributes a copy of Raphael's 
Leo X (84002) in Sala xiv, and Fra Bartolommeo an Assump- 
tion of the Virgin (84044 in Sala vi) painted in 15 16. Here 
too is that noble fifteenth-century bronze bust of Dante 
that everyone knows so well. 

The Sienese works are at least equally noteworthy. 
Perhaps by Lippo Memmi is a fine Noli me Tangere (84313). 
By the prolific master Taddeo Bartoli Naples boasts but 
one picture, a small S. Sebastian, but by Giovanni di 
Paolo it has two works, a Noli me Tangere and a S. 
Eleutrio and Adorers ; and of the beautiful work of Matteo 
di Giovanni it has one great example, the notable Massacre 
of the Innocents, painted in 1488 (84192) ; a tondo by 
the late Sienese master Andrea del Bresciano, the Madonna 
and Child with the infant S. John, closing the examples 
here of the school. 

The Umbrian and March masters are less well repre- 
sented. A Madonna and Child by Caporali, painted in 
T484, is a surprise in Sala vi ; it is the only work by an 
early Umbro-March master in the city. In the same 
room is an Assumption (84017) designed by Pintoricchio, 
but painted by Eusebio di S. Giorgio his pupil. The 
Madonna with the Bird (83994), painted by their con- 
temporary Antoniazzo Romano in 1484, is of fine quality. 
This master has a later work in S. Paolo Maggiore, a 
Madonna and Child with SS. Peter and Paul. By far the 
finest work by any Umbrian here in Naples is the splendid 
portrait by Raphael of Cardinal Famese, afterwards 
Pope Paul III (84004 in Sala xiv), and it is the only 
work by the master in the south of Italy. His pupil 
Giulio Romano is well represented here by the Madonna 
della Gatta (83988) in the same room. 

Undoubtedly the finest works in the gallery, however, 
taking them altogether, belong to the Venetian school. 



THE PICTURE GALLERY 55 

This fine series begins with a noble Bartolommeo Vivarini, 
a Madonna and Child Enthroned (83906, Sala xv), painted 
in 1469, a beautiful early example by the master. By his 
nephew and pupil Alvise Vivarini there is a good altar- 
piece of the Madonna and Child with SS. Francis and 
Bernardino (839067) in the same room, where too Giovanni 
Bellini is represented by a very beautiful early work, 
painted about 1460, a Transfiguration (83990). The 
influence of the Vivarini and Bellini is felt in the work 
of Antonello da Messina, by whom is the Portrait of a Man 
here which must not be passed by, and in the Bust of a 
Cardinal by Jacopo Barbari. Nor is it easy to forget 
the two early works by Lotto, the Madonna with S. 
Peter Martyr (83956), painted in 1503, and the some- 
what doubtful bust of a man in a white coat, nor the 
Santa Conversazione with donors (8401 1) by Palma 
Vecchio. 

These men were all pupils of Giovanni Bellini, as indeed 
was the greatest master Venice produced, Titian. The 
Naples Gallery happily possesses five portraits by Titian, 
of which one is the famous group of Paul iii and his nephew 
Ottaviano and Cardinal Famese. This glorious work 
was probably painted in Rome, but it remains unfinished. 
It only came to Naples in 1734. An earlier portrait of 
Pope Paul III by the same master is in the same room 
(Sala xiii) ; this was painted in Bologna in 1543. A 
slightly later work is the Danae here, painted in Rome 
in 1545 for the Farnese, as was the S. Mary Magdalen also 
in this gallery. This work bears Titian's signature, as 
does the Portrait of Philip ii, a replica from Titian's hand 
of the work in the Pitti Palace. 

Titian's younger contemporary, Sebastiano del Piombo 
may be seen here in three late works, the Holy Trinity in 
Sala XIV and the two portraits in the same room, one 
representing Pope Clement vii. 

The North ItaHan schools are in most cases well repre- 
sented in Naples. That of Padua boasts here of two works 



56 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

by Mantegna, the damaged S. Euphemia of 1454 (83946) 
and the portrait of Francesco Gonzaga (83964). 

Nor is the school of Parma poorer, for there are three fine 
Correggios, one an early work, S. Anthony Abbot, painted 
in 1514 (131060), another the Betrothal of S. Catherine, 
painted four years later, similar to but smaller than the 
work in the Louvre (83972), and the exquisite '' Zingarella " 
(83969), the Madonna and Child in the wilderness weary 
on the road to Egypt. There are also, by Correggio's 
pupil Parmigiano, two pictures of the Madonna and Child, 
and no less than five portraits. 

The school of Ferrara gives us three pictures of the 
Madonna and Child by Dosso Dossi, a late work of his 
pupil Ortolano, a San Sebastian and a Circumcision by 
Garofalo. 

The great portrait-painter of Brescia, Moretto, is, un- 
fortunately, only represented here by an Ecce Homo, 
an early work. Even the school of Milan is not without 
examples here, uninteresting though they be, nor Leonardo's 
followers, Luini, Oggiono, and Gianpietro, the first being 
seen in two works, a Madonna and Child and a S. John 
Baptist. 

But when all is said, it is not among these lesser works 
that we choose to spend our time, but rather here with the 
beauty that Tuscany, Umbria, and Venice have lent to 
a city that needs it more than any other place in Italy, 
being herself so poor in dehght. 



II 

POSILIPO 

THE true delight of Naples, the beauty which has 
confounded her name with itself, and which is so 
astonishing and really incomparable that for ages men have 
repeated the old adage: Vedi Napoli e poi muori, is not 
to be found in the city itself ; it belongs wholly to its 
environment, the wonderful country in which it stands a 
beggar by the wayside. 

The beauty of this comer of Campania, so full of marvels 
over which the smoking pyramid of Vesuvius towers 
and broods, a true symbol summing up all its character ; 
of the glorious bay between Capo Miseno and the headland 
of Sorrento, with its delicious islands, is not to be seen or 
understood in Naples, nor, in all its fulness, even from the 
monastery of S. Martino under S. Elmo over the city. To 
enjoy Naples, the beautiful world in which she stands, it is 
necessary to leave the city and to pass everywhere about 
that vast bay, to explore all its shores and headlands, to 
visit Sorrento, Castellamare, and Pompeii upon the one 
side, and Pozzuoli, Baia, and Capo Miseno on the other ; 
and first of all, for it gives you all at a glance, to climb 
and explore the headland of Posilipo, the narrow volcanic 
ridge of no great height but everywhere steep and abrupt 
which runs south-west from S. Elmo into the sea, and 
which forms a barrier between the immediate surroundings 
of Naples and those of Puteoli and Baia. 

Perhaps the best way to do this is to pass out of the city 
by the Villa Nazionale, at the far end of which is the Piazza 

57 



58 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Principe di Napoli. Out of this piazza two roads proceed 
westward, the Strada di Piedigrotta and the Mergellina. 
The first of these roads leads in a few yards to the Piazza 
di Piedigrotta, in which stands the old thirteenth-century 
church of S. Maria di Piedigrotta, now spoilt by restoration. 
Within is a fine picture, perhaps by some Flemish painter, 
of the Piet^, the wings painted it might seem under Sienese 
influence; and an ancient picture of the Madonna, whose 
aid Charles iii invoked when upon September 7, 1744, he 
met the Spaniards at Velletri and defeated them. In 
commemoration of this victory the king reinstituted the 
ancient Festa di Piedigrotta, which took place annually 
upon the birthday of the Blessed Virgin, the morrow of the 
battle. This huge fair continued to be held every year 
with considerable magnificence until the fall of the Bourbon 
dynasty in 1859, ^-nd to it we owe many of those delightful 
songs which are the only artistic glory of Naples. To-day 
the fair has degenerated into an uproarious merry-making 
that takes place for the most part after dark, when the 
Grotta Nuova is illuminated. 

The Grotta Nuova di Posilipo is a vast tunnel more 
than 800 yards long, bored through the hill of Posilipo as a 
short cut upon the level from the western bay of Naples, 
the Riviera di Chiaia, to the bay of Pozzuoli. It was opened 
in 1885 and took the place of the Old Grotto, which was not 
quite so long. This was constructed in the first years of the 
Empire, and probably by Augustus, who made Misenum 
his chief naval port. It is a magnificent piece of engineer- 
ing and well worth seeing for all its gloom and narrowness, 
of which Seneca complains. The Dark Age, face to face 
with so Roman a thing, attributed it to the magic of the 
sorcerer Virgil, whose tomb was built upon the hillside 
above it. 

That Virgil had a villa upon the hill of Posilipo is certain, 
and thither by his own wish his ashes were brought from 
Brundusium, where he died on September 21, B.C. 19. We 
have no means of knowing exactly where this villa stood, 



POSILIPO 59 

but in spite of criticism it is well to remember that the 
spot shown to-day has been traditionally the site of his 
tomb for at least fifteen hundred years. There seems 
indeed no real reason to doubt that the ancient Roman 
columbarium above the old road is the tomb of the great 
poet, and that there of old stood his villa, in which he wrote 
so much of the Georgics, signing them indeed from '' the 
lap of sweet Parthenope." 

lllo Vergilium me tempore dulcis alebat 
Parthenope studiis florentem ignobilis oti, 
Carmina qui lusi pastonim, audaxque juventa 
Tityre, te patulae cecini sub tegmine fagi. 

Not much more than a century after Virgil's death his 
tomb was visited by the poet Statins, who was bom at 
Naples in A. D. 45, and who describes himself as composing 
his poems beside the tomb — 

Lo ! idly wandering on the sea-beat strand 
Where the fam'd Syren in Ausonia's land 
First moored her bark, I strike the sounding string ; 
At Virgil's honoured tomb I sit and sing ; 
Warm'd by the hallowed spot my Muse takes fire 
And sweeps with bolder hand my humble lyre.^ 

About the same time another Latin poet, Silius Italicus, 
bought the place and restored or guarded the tomb from 
neglect, and even performed certain rites there, according 
to Martial— 

Silius haec magni celebrat monumenta Maronis, 

Jugera facundi qui Ciceronis habet. 
Haeredem dominumque sui tumulive larisve ; 

Non ahum mallet, nee Maro, nee Cicero. ^ 

And in the following epigram we read that the tomb 
till then had only been cared for by a poor peasant — 

Jam prope desertos cineres, et sancta Maronis 
Nomina qui coleret, pauper et unus erat. 
Silius optatae succerrere censuit umbrae, 
Silius et vatem, non minor ipse, colit. 

^ Statins, Silv. iv. 4, 50. Trs. by Eustace. 
2 Martial, Ep. xi. 48. 



6o NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

" News has just come," writes Pliny, '' that Silius 
Italicus has starved himself to death at his villa near 
Naples. Ill-health was the cause assigned. . . . He 
owned a number of villas in the same neighbourhood, and 
used to neglect his old ones through his favourite passion 
for his recent purchases. In each he had any quantity of 
books, statues, and busts, which he not only kept by him 
but even treated with a sort of veneration, especially the 
bust of Virgil, whose birthday he kept up far more 
scrupulously than he did his own, principally at Naples, 
where he used to approach the poet's monument as though 
it were a temple." 

Nor is that all ; for it is said that even S. Paul came to 
the tomb of him who had prophesied of the Son to be 
bom of a pure Virgin, and this was long remembered at 
Mantua in the hymn they used to sing there at Vespers 
on the feast of the saint — 

When to Maro's tomb they brought him. 
Tender grief and pity wrought him 

To bedew the stone with tears ; 
What a saint I might have crowned thee 
Had I only hving found thee. 

Poet first and without peers.^ 

Of what befell the tomb in the Dark Age we know 
nothing, but with the revival of Italian letters it at once 
appears ; Dante speaks of it, for Virgil says to him in 
Purgatory — 

It now is evening there where buried Hes 
The body on which I cast a shade, removed 
To Naples from Brundusium's wall . . . 

^ Ad Maronis mausoleum 
Ductus, fudit super eum * 

Pise rorem lacrymae ; 
Quantum, inquit, te fecissem, 
Vivum si te invenissem, 
Poetarum maxime. 

The translation is by J. A. Symonds, 



POSILIPO 6i 

and Petrarch upon his first visit to Naples was taken to the 
almost sacred place by his host, King Robert the Wise. 
There it is said he planted a laurel, the successor to that 
which had always stood there, and had died after more than 
a thousand years in the year of Dante's death ; Petrarch's 
tree was still flourishing in the eighteenth century, when it 
was destroyed by relic-hunters. Petrarch was not alone in 
the homage he paid to the ashes of the great Roman poet. 
Boccaccio at the lowest ebb of his fortunes — his Fiammetta 
unfaithful, his father ruined — retired in poverty from the 
life of the Angevin court to live outside the city, " sub 
monte Falemo apud busta Maronis," whence he dates his 
letters, and there, amid a tempest of ill, turned to the verse 
of the Mantuan, and vowed upon Virgil's grave to give 
himself to letters. 

As we see it to-day, the tomb is a small vault having 
three windows. In the sixteenth century an urn stood in 
the midst containing, so it was said, the ashes of the poet. 
This has now disappeared, having, according to some, been 
sent to Mantua, while others assert that King Robert the 
Wise removed it to the Castel dell' Ovo for safer keeping. 
In front of the entrance to the now empty tomb is a copy 
of the epitaph, composed, it is supposed, by Virgil himself — 

Mantua me genuit, Calabri rapuere, tenet nunc 
Parthenope, cecini pascua, rura, duces. . . . 

Upon the sepulchre itself we read the epitaph placed there 
in the sixteenth century- — 

Cui cineres ? Tumuli hsec vestigia ? Conditur olim 
Die hie qui cecinit pascua, rura, duces. 

It is easy to assert that in spite of all this we have no 
evidence whatever that it was here the ashes of Virgil were 
laid, and no doubt we must admit such an assertion to be 
true ; but on the other hand the tradition is so strong that 
we cannot ignore it if we would. At any rate, no one who 
has ever visited the place — and it is almost a duty to visit 
it — but must have hoped in his heart that here indeed the 



62 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

dust of the greatest of Roman poets lay through the cen- 
turies above a world so lovely that the view of it hence 
catches the breath. It is such a place, naturally hallowed 
by divine beauty between Latin earth and sky and sea, 
that is the rightful shrine of the Mantuan. 

From that holy place, hallowed at least by the love, 
the faith, and the tears of so many generations of men, you 
descend to the Strada di Mergellina and the little church of 
S. Maria del Parto, the Chiesa del Sannazaro. This little 
sanctuary was built by the poet Sannazaro for the Servites 
upon the site of a villa given to him by Frederick ii of 
Aragon in 1496 and destroyed in 1529 by the French. Its 
very dedication, S. Maria del Parto, speaks of him, for it was 
chosen from his famous Latin poem '' De partu Virginis." 
The poet, born in Naples in 1455, lies behind the high altar, 
where a monument of his own design executed by Gerolamo 
da S. Croce, a pagan affair, the decoration of which is taken 
from his poem " Arcadia," supports his sarcophagus, upon 
which is graven his " Academic " name Actius Sincerus. 

From the Chiesa del Sannazaro you follow the Strada 
Nuova, the road which Murat built during his brief reigUj 
over the headland of Posilipo. The views all the way are 
of an indescribable glory and magnificence, embracing as 
they do the whole gulf between the Capo di Posilipo, the 
headland of Sorrento, the island of Capri with Naples and 
Vesuvius in the middle distance. By many a fair villa 
the roads climb for some three miles from the ruins of the 
Palazzo di Donna Anna by the sea, the palace begun in 
the seventeenth century by Donna Anna Carafa, wife of 
the Viceroy Duca de Medina, and never finished, up past the 
Capo di Posilipo, the Phalerum of the ancients, till at the 
top of the great ridge the wonderful view of the Gulf of 
Pozzuoli within the beautiful headland of Misenum breaks 
suddenly upon you in all its dreamy loveliness. 

There by the Villa Thalberg a path descends seaward to 
the fishing village of Marechiano, below which is the little 
church of S. Maria del Faro, marking the site of an ancient 



POSILIPO 63 

Pharos. Here to the west stood the great villa of Vedius 
Pollio, the famous Pausilypum — the ** end of sorrow," or, 
as we might say, Sans Souci, which he bequeathed to 
Augustus Caesar, and which named the whole ridge. All 
about are the ruins of this villa, along the shore and rising 
out of the sea, known now by fantastic names such as the 
Scuola di Virgilio and the Casa degli Spiriti. In ancient 
times the whole of this headland seems to have supported 
this estate, its buildings as often as not standing right 
in the sea, constructed doubtless at immense cost and with 
great skill. This immense and beautiful villa had its 
fish ponds, into which it is asserted Vedius Pollio once had 
a slave who had broken a glass thrown to be devoured by 
the fish ; here was a theatre and an odeon, of which we may 
still see considerable remains, as we may too of numerous 
other buildings, as porticoes, columns, and reservoirs, 
even the rock of La Gajola being covered with debris. 
Nothing to be seen anywhere about Naples gives one so 
clear an idea of the great wealth and splendid life of the 
Romans along this coast ; we in our days have nothing 
comparable to the luxury of such a place built really in the 
sea, adventurously about this headland. 

One returns to the high road with regret. There, however, 
the noble view still rewards one at every step of the way, 
as the road descends past the Villa Sans Souci. Not far 
from the bottom a great tunnel opens in the hill above the 
Punta di Coroglio. This is the Grotta di Sejano. It was, 
according to Strabo, who saw it, the work of the engineer 
Marcus Cocceius, who had already constructed the Grotta 
di Posilipo and the tunnel or passage-way from the Lake of 
Avemus to Cumae. The work here upon Posilipo was made 
by order of Sejanus, the favourite of Tiberius, so it is said. 
It is more than half a mile long — ^longer, wider, and loftier 
indeed than the Grotta di Posilipo — and doubtless served 
the great Villa Pausilypum as a means of communication 
with Puteoli, for the eastern end of it opens close to the 
island rock of La Gajola. 



64 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

The island of Nisida, the Nesis of Strabo, which stands 
up so high off Capo CorogHo, is but a mile and a half in 
circumference. Of old, before the beginning of history, it 
was part of a crater, but as we know from Cicero in his day 
it was the site of a villa belonging to Brutus, and there, 
shortly after the death of Caesar, the great orator conferred 
with his host and Cassius and Libo upon their future plans. 
Little of this famous place remains, but the island is still 
famous, as Pliny tells us it was in his day, for its asparagus, 
though it no longer boasts the beautiful bosco of which 
Statins speaks. To-day between it and the shore, upon a 
rock connected with the island by an ancient mole, is the 
Lazzaretto Vecchio. Upon the island itself is a prison, 
but the most interesting sight is the curious harbour sea- 
ward, Porto Paone, a delicious pool opposite Capo Miseno. 

From the Grotto of Sejanus one may either descend into 
the plain and make for Bagnoli and thus return to Naples 
by train, or climb again up to the Villa Thalberg, and there, 
taking the road on the left, the Strada Belvedere, come 
back into Naples along the ridge of Posilipo between garden 
walls which now and then allow one an exquisite glimpse 
of the bays of Naples and Pozzuoli, and more especially 
towards the end of the way under an arch upon the right 
appears that famous view of Naples and Vesuvius with the 
stone pine in the foreground. 



Ill 

THE GULF OF POZZUOLI 

TO understand at a glance the nature of the country 
to the west of the ridge of PosiHpo, the bay of Pozzuoli 
and the Phlegraean fields, it is necessary, I think, to visit 
Camaldoli, the monastery founded in 1585 by the Marquis 
of Pescara, the victor of Pa via. It stands upon the eastern 
summit of the loftiest hill to the north-west of Naples, 
and is best reached out of Porta S. Martino. Apart from 
the view, there is little or nothing to see, but from the 
Belvedere, reached by a shady path through the garden of 
the monastery, there is suddenly spread out before you 
all that beautiful coast, the bays of Naples, Pozzuoli, and 
Gaeta, the great headlands and islands, Vesuvius in all its 
majesty, S. Elmo with Naples at its feet, the plain of 
Campania Felix with its cities, and beyond, the great 
chain of the Apennines. More especially before and 
beneath you is spread out that strange, restless country 
of the Phlegraean fields with its craters and lakes, on the 
beautiful seashore of which stand Puteoli, Baia, and Cuma, 
once so famous. 

It is from Camaldoli that all this strange country is 
best seen at a glance, but to visit it from Naples, one must 
go to Piedigrotta, and pass through the long tunnel under 
Posilipo, at the western end of which stands the little 
town of Fuorigrotta. 

Fuorigrotta is a miserable huddle of houses, and would 
have for us no interest at all, but that in the church of 
S. Vitale there, the poet Leopardi, bom at R^canati in 1798, 
5 



66 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

lies, his grave marked by a wonderful monument in the 
portico of the church. 

Evelyn, who came this way, but through the old Grotto, 
which he well describes, in 1644-1645 speaks with enthusi- 
asm, as who would not, of all this plain on the threshold 
of which Fuorigrotta stands. **We were delivered," he 
writes, " from the bowels of the earth into one of the most 
delicious plaines in the world ; the oranges, lemons, pome- 
granates, and other fruits blushing yet on the perpetually 
green trees ; for the summer is here eternal, caused by 
the natural and adventitious heate of the earth, warm'd 
through subterranean fires." 

The first hint we receive of the volcanic nature of this 
country is in the Lago d' Agnano, now drained and scarcely 
worth a visit. It is an old crater four miles in circum- 
ference, about a mile from Fuorigrotta upon the beautiful 
road to Pozzuoli. Here on the south side of the crater 
are the old Stufe di San Germano, still full of sulphurous 
fumes, and a little beyond is the once famous Grotta del 
Cane, now happily no longer used. Evelyn well describes 
the cruel exhibition of its properties as practised till our 
own time. '' We now came," says he, '' to a lake of about 
two miles in circumference environ' d with hills ; the water 
of it is fresh and swete on the surf ace but salt at botome . . . 
and 'tis reputed of that profunditude in the middle that it 
is bottomlesse. The people call it Lago d' Agnano, from the 
multitude of serpents which, involved together about the 
spring, fall down from the cliffy hills into it. It has no 
fish, nor will any live in it. We tried the old experiment on 
a dog in the Grotta del Cane or Charon's Cave ; it is not 
above three or four paces deepe, and about the height of 
a man, nor very broad. Whatever having life enters it 
presently expires. Of this we made tryal with two dogges, 
one of which we bound to a short pole to guide him the 
more directly into the farther part of the den, where he was 
no sooner entered but, without the least noyse or so much 
as a struggle, except that he panted for breath, lolling out 



THE GULF OF P0Z2U0LI 67 

his tongue, his eyes being fixed, we drew him out, dead to 
all appearances ; but immediately plunging him into the 
adjoining lake, within less than half an hour he recovered, 
and swimming to shore ran away from us. . . . The ex- 
periment has been tried on men, as on that poor creature 
whom Peter of Toledo caused to go in ; hkewise on some 
Turkish slaves ; two souldiers and other foole-hardy 
persons, who all perished and could never be recovered by 
the water of the lake as are dogs, for which many learned 
reasons have been offered, as Simon Majolus in his book of 
the Canicular-dayes has mentioned. ..." 

It was certainly a needless brutality to prove the 
quaUties of an exhalation of carbonic acid gas upon living 
creatures. To-day the guide or attendant supphes a 
torch, which is promptly extinguished ; but the draining 
of the lake, to say nothing of the protection of the abuse 
of living creatures, make the place not worth a visit. 

From the Lago d'Agnano one follows the beautiful road 
over the hills, whence many a lovely view opens towards 
Nisida and Capri, or of the great bay of PozzuoH and the 
headland of Misenum, past the Capuchin convent of S. 
Gennaro, which marks the site of the martyrdom of S,. 
Januarius, to the crater of the half-extinct volcano of 
Solfatara. This is worth any trouble to see. The broken 
crater is an irregularly shaped plain, enclosed by paUid hills 
of tufa, scored with fissures and smeUing of sulphur. The 
whole plain is pitted with vents which bubble and steam, 
and in the surrounding hillsides many smoking fumaroli 
may be visited. Perhaps the most active of these holes 
lie towards the south-east, where there is one full of hot 
water, some thirty-five feet deep, and where are two great 
smoking fissures that become especially active when a 
hghted torch is held near them. The whole place is most 
weird and disturbing, a lake of mud which one feels may 
at any moment become a boihng cauldron under one's 
feet. The only eruption within historic memory, however, 
took place in 1198, though from time out of mind Solfatara 



68 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

has been about as active as it is to-day. The ancients 
knew it well, and called it Forum Vulcani ; the hills 
about it, which still produce the white potter's clay, 
were known to them as the Colles Leucogsei, and the 
aluminous and boiling waters in the holes as the Pontes 
Leucogaei. 

From this curious and disquieting place the road 
descends past the great amphitheatre to Pozzuoli, founded 
in the sixth century B.C. by the Greeks, and called Dicae- 
archia, and renamed by the Romans during the second 
Punic War Puteoli. The place was famous as a port long 
before the Romans used it, but under their administration 
it greatly developed in commercial importance, for it was 
the first really good port to the south of Rome, and in 
194 B.C. they established a colony there. Thereafter it 
became one of the most considerable places of trade in Italy, 
a port of general embarkation for the East, for Egypt, 
Africa, and Spain. Among the more famous travellers 
who we know landed here are Cicero, on his return from 
Sicily, and S. Paul, upon his journey to Rome. He had 
landed at Syracuse, and had tarried there three days. 
" And from thence we fetched a compass, and came to 
Rhegium : and after one day the south wind blew, and 
we came the next day to Puteoli : where we found brethren, 
and were desired to tarry with them seven days : and so 
we went toward Rome." ^ 

S. Paul came as a prisoner in the Castor, an Alexandrine 
ship, and landed here upon May 3, in the year a.d. 59. 
He found brethren in Puteoli, perhaps slaves, in the 
service of the wealthy Romans, who frequented the baths 
here in the spring and summer seasons, and whose villas 
lined all this coast. For Puteoli was, in the time of the 
Empire, not only perhaps the greatest emporium of foreign 
trade in Italy, it was famous too as a pleasure resort, 
the capital of all this bay to which it gave its name. In 
those days a vast mole ran out into the bay from the town, 

1 Acts xxviii. 13, 14. 




PORTRAIT OF CARDINAL FARNESE 

RAPHAEL 

J/ieseo Xazidhzle, Xaples 



THE GULF OF POZZUOLI 69 

supported on stone piles with arches between them. Here 
the people, according to Seneca, used to assemble to watch 
for the ships from Alexandria, and it was from the extremity 
of this mole that Cahgula built his famous bridge across 
the bay to Baia. This, of course, was but a temporary 
structure, and the remains still pointed out at Pozzuoli 
as belonging to it are in truth the ruins of the mole. 
Suetonius describes the bridge graphically enough : 
" Caligula," says he, " invented a new kind of spectacle, 
such as had never been heard of before. For he made a 
bridge about three miles and a half long, from the mole of 
Puteoli to Baiae, collecting trading vessels from all direc- 
tions, mooring them in two rows by their anchors, and 
spreading earth upon them to form a viaduct, after the 
fashion of the Appian Way. This bridge he crossed and 
recrossed for two days together ; the first day he was 
mounted on a horse richly caparisoned, wearing on his 
head a crown of oak leaves, armed with a battle-axe, a 
Spanish buckler, and sword, and in a cloak of cloth of 
gold ; the following day, dressed as a charioteer, standing 
in a chariot, drawn by two high-bred horses, having with 
him a young boy named Darius, one of the Parthian 
hostages, and attended by a cohort of Praetorian guards, 
and a number of his friends, in cars of Gaulish fashion. 
I know that most people believe that this bridge was 
designed by Caius in imitation of Xerxes, who, to the 
amazement of the world, laid a bridge across the Helles- 
pont, which is somewhat narrower than the distance 
between Baiae and Puteoli. Others, however, think 
that he did it to excite alarm in Germany and Britain, 
which he was just about to invade, by the report of some 
stupendous work. But for myself, when I was a boy, I 
heard my grandfather say that the reason assigned by 
some of the courtiers who lived in greatest intimacy 
with him was that when Tiberius was in doubt about 
the nomination of a successor, and inclined to choose his 
grandson, Thrasyllus, the astrologer, had assured him that 



70 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Caius would no more be Emperor than he would ride on 
horseback across the Gulf of Baiae." 

Pozzuoli still keeps very many ruins of its ancient 
greatness. Of these, the greatest and the first one comes to 
on the way from Solfatara is the imposing Amphitheatre, 
tier above tier, standing upon three series of arches with 
remains of the external portico and triple colonnades of 
the two great entrances. It is an oval structure 482 feet 
long, the arena itself measuring 336 feet by 138 feet. The 
whole is honeycombed with passages and chambers for the 
gladiators and for the beasts and their victims. Here 
Nero in the Imperial seat, which was adorned with 
Corinthian pillars of black marble, entertained the King 
of Armenia, himself killing two bulls with a single lance 
snatched from one of the guards, and here in the time of 
Diocletian S. Januarius was exposed to the beasts, who 
would not harm him. 

Near the Amphitheatre are some ruins commonly known 
as the Temple of Diana, but more probably belonging to a 
range of Thermae. Near them are the remains of an 
Aqueduct. 

Within the town itself there is little to see. The 
Cathedral, indeed, is in great part constructed out of the 
remains of a Roman Temple dedicated to Augustus, and 
there are some fine columns, but nothing there may now 
compare with the Amphitheatre or the ruins commonly 
called the Serapeum. 

These celebrated remains are found not far from the 
shore upon the road to Baia. They are usually called the 
ruins of a Temple of Serapis, but it is far more likely that 
they belonged to a Bath served by the hot springs close by. 
The general plan would seem to have been that of a large 
quadrangular atrium or court surrounded internally by a 
portico of forty- eight columns with chambers at the sides 
and a circular hall in the midst. This circular structure 
was upheld by sixteen columns of giallo antico now at 
Caserta. Three of the columns of the portico, of cipolhno, 



The gulf of pozzuoli ^t 

remain, and are of great interest as well as of considerable 
beauty, for they would seem to bear witness to repeated 
changes in the level of the soil, since their middle portions 
are all covered with the borings of some shell-fish, the lower 
parts being untouched. It is therefore thought that the 
whole building must at some time have been buried to a 
depth of not less than eleven feet, perhaps by the volcanic 
upheaval which created the Monte Nuovo. 

Not far from these remains are the ruins of two other 
buildings, both of them under water. One of them is said 
to be the Temple of Neptune, of which Cicero speaks. 

The road now proceeds round the bay towards Monte 
Nuovo and the Lucrine Lake. Above the road upon the 
cliff near the Stabilamento Armstrong are the ruins, it 
is said, of Cicero's villa, which as Pliny tells us was situated 
between Puteoli and the Lucrine Lake. The road then 
climbs the lower slope of Monte Nuovo, a volcanic hill 
heaved up thus out of the earth upon September 30, 1538. 
It seems that for tw^o years before that date this whole 
district had suffered severely from earthquakes, and these 
shocks gradually grew more frequent, till upon Sep- 
tember 28 and the following night more than twenty 
violent upheavals were felt. The whole coast appears 
to have been upheaved, and eye-witnesses assure us that the 
sea retired not less than two hundred paces, strewing the 
shore with dead fish. Upon S. Michael's day, a new crater 
suddenly opened where Monte Nuovo now stands, from 
whicn huge clouds of steam laden with volcanic debris 
burst forth, covering the countryside with ashes, lapilli, 
and black mud, some of which was carried as far as Naples. 
In the early morning of the following day, with a thunderous 
explosion, the crater began to cast up amid dense volumes 
of stinking smoke huge boulders, which were flung more 
than a mile and a half up into the air, and the whole coast 
was buried deep in ashes. Thus was formed Monte Nuovo, 
the pyramidal hill not less than a mile and a half in circum- 
ference, and nearly five hundred feet high, beneath which lie 



72 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

a village, baths, many villas, and about half the Lucrine 
Lake. The volcano has never since been active. 

At the foot of the Monte Nuovo the road divides, the 
way on the right leading past the Lake of Avernus to 
Cumse, that on the left still along the seashore past the 
Lucrine Lake to Baia and Misenum. The Lucrine Lake, 
the Styx of Virgil, lies, as I have said, half under Monte 
Nuovo : it was and is separated from the sea by a causeway 
called the Via Herculea, because, as Propertius asserts, 
Hercules constructed it to bear him and the oxen of Geryon 
across the swamp. It was famous of old and still is, I 
think, for its oysters, which are plentiful, but so amazingly 
expensive to strangers that it is wiser to forego them, in 
spite of the praise of the poets. Indeed, it must be said 
that the rapacity of all the tratforie and hotel-keepers along 
this coast is such that no one would willingly deal with 
them twice. Let the traveller bring his luncheon with 
him from Naples and defy the rascals. 

At the western end of the Lucrine Lake the high land 
bluffs out into a sharp headland, the Punta dell' Epitafho, 
over which the road to Baia climbs. Here are the so-called 
Bagni di Nerone, a really amazing series of low narrow 
tunnels in the rock, at the end of which are hot springs. 
The whole point is honeycombed with these passages, and 
is ever3rwhere strewn with ruins. 

Scarcely five hundred yards to the north of the Lucrine 
Lake, and surrounded by pleasant hills, vineyards, and 
orange groves, lies the Lake of Avernus, an old crater full of 
water, which according to the ancients was the gate of the 
Infernal regions. In its smiling aspect of to-day, at any 
rate in early summer, it is impossible to recognize the dark- 
ling lake, the " pestilent Avernus " of the poets. Where 
are the Tartarean woods, the infernal vapours of Virgil ? 
Was it Augustus who felled the one and dispelled the 
other when he built the Portus Julius for the Roman fleet ? 
Here Ulysses and ^Eneas after him descended to the shades. 
Their passage is still shown by the natives, a long grotto 



THE GULF OF POZZUOLI 73 

on the southern side of the lake, the grotto of the Cumaean 
Sibyl, similar to the Bagni di Nerone. This passage, dark 
and half full of v/ater, is perhaps worth inspection, if only 
in order to hear the farago of nonsense the custodian pours 
into your willing ears, in which Virgil and Dante, the Sibyl 
and Cerberus, are all mixed up in an obscene confusion.^ 
The road which passes high above Lake Avernus by a most 
pleasant way presently brings you to the Arco Felice, a 
lofty arch of brick across the old road from Puteoli to 
Cumae. Hence the road descends towards the old Greek 
city. 

Cuma was, as I have said, the oldest Greek colony in 
Italy. It and its daughters Dicsearchia (Puteoli), Palae- 
polis (Posilipo), and Neapolis (Naples), did not form apart 
of Magna Graecia, but were a group of colonies apart. 
The old writers tell us that the Euboean ships were guided 
hither by a dove and the sound of brazen cymbals. The 
city would seem to have been founded about 800 B.C., 
and the period of its greatest prosperity and wealth would 
seem to have been from 700-500 B.C. At this time it was 
the greatest city of the south, and had extended its dominion 
over a large part of the country ; and undoubtedly it 
rivalled at a later time the glory and wealth of Sybaris 
and Croton on the Ionian Sea. From about 420 B.C., how- 
ever, it ceased to be a great city, though it retained many 
of its Hellenic customs even to the Augustan age. It 
appears at this time as a half-ruined Campanian town, 
and after 388 B.C. came within the power of Rome. It 
was in two senses of the word a sacred city ; it was the 
refuge of Tarquineus Superbus, the last of the Roman 
kings, who here ended his days in the court of Aristodenus, 
the tyrant of Cumse, and from it Rome received the 
Sibylline Books, for, as I have said, the Sibyl was supposed 
to have here her home, as the poets testify, and as was 
certainly believed well into historic time. Little, however, 

^ According to this fellow, Dante slept here \vith the Sibyl — he shows 
their couch of stone — ^who was presently brought to bed of Cerberus. 



74 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

remains of the ancient town and its temples. From the 
ruined acropolis you may enjoy, indeed, a glorious view 
over the sea, but where are the great Temples of Demeter 
and Persephone, the two goddesses more especially wor- 
shipped in Cumae ? Almost nothing remains save a few 
stones. The acropolis itself, however, is apparently honey- 
combed with caverns, and one of these opening upon the 
south-east of the hill is now thought to be the true Grotta 
of the Sibyl. According to Virgil this had a hundred 
mouths whence one might hear, in as many voices, oracles 
of the prophetess. It may well be that this is indeed the 
place of which he speaks. 

From the utter desolation of Cumae the road turns south 
past an ancient amphitheatre half hidden among the 
vines, about the hills of Avemus to Baia, passing on the 
way the Lago del Fusaro between it and the sea. This 
perhaps was the ancient harbour of Cumae ; it is now a 
mere lagoon, celebrated still for its oysters, the Acherusia 
Palus of the Romans. From the lake the road climbs 
over the high neck of land which connects Monte de' 
Salvatechi and Misenum with the mainland, and with all 
the bay of Pozzuoli spread out before you, you descend 
into Baia. 

There is nothing lovelier upon all this coast than Baia, 
with its beautiful bay under its mighty castle just within 
the great headland of Misenum. Horace loved it well, 
and thought it lovelier than any other place in the world — 

Nullus in orbe sinus Bails praelucet amoenis . . . 

and Martial speaks of this bay as the golden shore of 

Venus — 

Litus bcatse Veneris aureum Baias, 
Baias superbae blanda dona naturae 
Ut mille laudem, Flacce, versibus Baias, 
Laudabo digne non satis tamen Baias. 

Baia seems to have been known as a port long before 
it boasted a town, and indeed derived its name from Baius, 



THE GULF OF P02ZU0LI 75 

one of the companions of Ulysses who was buried here. 
But it never won any fame until it became the favourite 
resort of the wealthy and luxurious Roman nobles towards 
the end of the Republic, when it became fashionable 
on account of its hot springs and its exceeding beauty. 
From the time of Caius Marius, who had a villa here, the 
whole shore was gradually lined with sumptuous palaces 
and gardens, often, as at Posihpo, built right on the sea, 
and indeed such was the splendour and luxury that Seneca 
sneers at it as diversorium vitiorum, a place where one 
enjoyed oneself without restraint of any sort. LucuUus 
certainly had a great villa in this neighbourhood, and the 
Emperors, especially Nero and Caligula, delighted in the 
place, as did Hadrian,who died here, and Alexander Severus, 
who built more than one villa upon the shore. But how 
little, alas, of all these splendid buildings, temples, and 
thermae and villas remains to us ! The chief are the 
vaulted ruins of the great and sumptuous Baths now called 
Temples, because, I suppose, of their shape and splendour. 
One visits them and then steals away to the beautiful quays 
by the blue water among the ships and the ropes and spars 
and poles and chains, where there is always a wind, to rest 
a little before climbing up to the Rocca on the hill built 
by Don Pedro de Toledo, the Viceroy. 

Lying there by the sea one remembers that it was not 
only the Romans after all who enjoyed and praised Baia. 
In the time of the Angevin kings it was again a place of 
great resort, and here Boccaccio won and lost his Fiam- 
metta, by this very sea. 

Certainly nothing upon this coast is lovelier than this 
bay shaped like a cup or the breast of a fair woman, and 
the old Roman buildings which pass under the names of 
various temples — of Diana, of Mercury, of Venus — but which 
are, as I have said, the various chambers of the great 
Thermae, for which the place was famous, lend it an interest 
and a charm which never fail to hold the traveller. 

For the most part, indeed, such a visitor is content with 



76 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Baia, and goes no farther. In this he does himself wrong. 
Everyone who comes this way should follow the old road 
about the bay up past the ancient Columbaria to the 
picturesque castle of Don Pedro de Toledo, now in private 
hands ; and if he has not time and inclination to explore 
the beautiful coast in a boat, let him follow the road on to 
Bacoli, a village in the midst of the vast and scattered 
ruins of the villa of Hortensius, the great orator famous for 
his " Asiatic " style, who had no rival in the Forum until 
he encountered Cicero ; where, after the plot to drown her 
had failed, Agrippina was assassinated by Nero her son. 

Dum petit a Baulis mater Caerellia Baias, 
Occidit insani crimine mersa freti. 
Gloria quanta perit vobis ! hsec monstra Neroni 
Nee quondam jussae praestiteratis aquae : ^ 

Her supposed tomb, the Sepolcro di Agrippina, is really 
the ruin of an ancient theatre. 

The villa of Hortensius, indeed, was the scene of more 
than one tragedy before Nero's matricide. There Marcellus, 
the adoptive son of Augustus, the husband of his daughter 
Julia, died in the twentieth year of his age, to the intense 
grief of the Emperor : 

Heu miserande puer, si qua fata aspera rumpas, 

Tu Marcellus eris. Manibus data lilia plenis ; 

Purpureos spargam flores, animamque nepotis 

His saltem accumulem donis, et fungar inani Mumere.^^ 

Upon the headland beyond Bacoli is a great building 
known as the Carceri di Nerone. This would seem to 
have been a vast reservoir of water, supplying the fleet in 
the great Augustan naval harbour of Misenum ; it was 
connected with the piscena mirahile at the top of the hill, 

1 Martial, Ep. iv. 63. 

2 Virgil, Mn. vi. 882. " Alas hapless boy ! yet may be that you 
break through your hard fate, you shall be a Marcellus. Give me 
handsfull of lilies ; I would strew bright flowers and plenteously 
with these gifts at least honour the spirit of my descendant and 
discharge an unavailing duty." 



THE GULF OF POZZUOLI ^^ 

the end of the Sermo conduit, a vast reservoir 230 feet 
long by 85 broad, covered with a vault borne by forty- 
eight vast pillars. Hence we look down upon the Mare 
Morto, which, with the recently embanked Porto di Miseno 
seaward, formed the great naval harbour constructed by 
Augustus, the greatest naval station in the Empire, taking 
precedence even of Ravenna. 

The remarkable promontory of Misenum, an almost 
isolated headland forming a double hill of some height, 
in shape pyramidal, and joined to the mainland only by 
a narrow strip of low land, must always have been famous. 
It is said to get its name from one of the companions of 
Ulysses, and the low land or valley between the double 
height was the site of the Elysian fields, those '' pleasant 
places " and '' smiling lawns " the " homes of the blessed." 

For Misenum enters history long before Augustus turned 
its harbour to such good account. Certainly the Cumaeans 
knew it, and if it were not very populous before the end of 
the Roman Republic, it was there that Augustus, Antony, 
and Pompey met on board Pompey's ship to divide the 
world between them after the death of Caesar. It was 
there that Pompey's admiral, Menas, proposed to his 
master to cut the cables, and to carry Augustus and Antony 
out to sea, helpless and prisoners. To which suggestion 
Pompey gave the memorable answer : " Thou shouldst 
have done this, Menas, and not have asked me concern- 
ing it." 

It is to Augustus, however, that the place owes its great 
repute. He established here at vast expense the greatest 
of his naval ports, and the town of Misenum was his arsenal, 
a purely naval city. Here the Elder Pliny was in command 
when in a.d. 79 Vesuvius suddenly awoke, and destroyed 
so many of the towns along the gulf, and chief among 
themJHerculaneum, Pompeii, and Stabiae. In that awful 
eruption Pliny lost his life. 

Here, too, in the time of the Republic, Caius Marius had 
his famous villa, which came into the hands of LucuUus 



78 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

for two and a half million denarii. LucuUus adorned the 
place with every conceivable magnificence, and later it 
came into the possession of Tiberius, who in a.d. 27 died 
there. The villa was situated upon the summit of the 
eastern hill, and indeed comprised the whole of the pro- 
montory, and some assert that it was here and not in the 
Castel deir Ovo that Romulus Augustulus, having fore- 
gone the Imperial crown in 576, came to pass the remainder 
of his days, by leave of Odoacer the barbarian. 

Some ruins of considerable extent still mark the place ; 
but of the town of Misenum upon the Cape itself almost 
nothing remains ; it appears to have been utterly destroyed 
by the Saracens in the ninth century. Indeed, to-day, 
the great promontory is a desolate place, which has but 
one thing to offer us of surpassing delight, the glorious 
view of sea and seashore, mountain and island, all the 
beauty and all the pleasure of the most beautiful corner 
of the world. Here, in the quietness that Naples, Posilipo, 
and Pozzuoli never knew, far from the crowd, one may 
look as long as one will over this classic sea towards those 
shores and islands that all the heroes have known, and 
of which, because of them, we too have dreamed since 
childhood. For this cause, then, at least, no other ItaHan 
coast is so sacred as this, or shall ever be so beautiful in 
our eyes. There over the wine-faced sea came great 
Ulysses upon his adventures ; hither into this port, past 
cape after cape, came not less great Mnea.s to found a 
people and an Empire, and so lightly in those Elysian 
fields passes, eternally and ever young, our childhood, full 
of all the glamour and delight of our poets, so that here 
above all we may say : Deus, auribus nostris audivimus et 
patres nostri ann untiaverunf nobis opera ad miranda, quce 
operatus es in diebus eorum et in diebus antiquis. 



IV 

VESUVIUS AND POMPEII 

IF upon the west of Naples lies the wonder of the 
Phlegraean fields in the paradise of the bay of Pozzuoli, 
to the east there stands a marvel at once much more 
astonishing and infinitely more beautiful — I mean the 
great burning mountain of Vesuvius, the greater of the 
only two continuously active volcanoes in Europe. 
Vesuvius, indeed, fills the mind and the imagination in 
Naples of native and stranger alike; it dominates and 
gives its character to the whole of this comer of Campania, 
and there is no moment of the day or night but men lift 
their eyes to it in fear or wonder. Goethe has spoken of 
it as ''a peak of hell rising out of paradise," but at least 
we must admit that it is all the same the most beautiful 
thing therein, the one thing of which we can never have 
enough, whose image remains always in our minds, and 
lends to this great bay its unique interest, and more than 
half its strange beauty. Without Vesuvius, Naples — the 
bay of Naples — would lose its identity, would become 
almost as any other gulf upon the Tyrrhene Sea, and the 
proverb which sums up the absolutely imique splendour 
of the city would lose all its meaning, and appear as a 
mere empty boast signifying nothing but vanity. 

This being so, to visit Vesuvius, to ascend the cone, and 
gaze down into the restless crater, which continually 
delights and threatens Naples and aU her villages with 
beauty and terror, would seem to be encumbent upon the 
traveller, and yet I think no QaQ has ever made that 

79, 



So NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

journey without great weariness and some disappointment. 
Vesuvius is best appreciated from afar, from Naples 
itself, from the Forum of Pompeii, or the Baths of Queen 
Giovanna at Sorrento. Thence it appears of so marvellous 
and strange a beauty, a great purple pyramid smoking in 
the sun, breathing fire in the darkness, exquisite at all 
times alike in form and colour, that nothing else in Europe 
I think is to be compared with it, for nothing else that we 
know is at once so beautiful and so evil, so suggestive of 
those half-realized forces latent within the body of the 
earth, which we have always regarded as malign, whose 
action is always catastrophic and tragical for us and our 
world, the expression of the hatred and ill-will of the 
spirit of evil, of chaos, towards God, and the beauty He 
has made for our delight. To visit Vesuvius, as one does 
to-day, and after driving for hours through the dingiest 
suburbs of Naples, through the dreariest of the old lava 
fields, to arrive at the foot of the funicular railway, which 
takes one within a few hundred feet of the top, is to lose 
all one's sense of wonder in the mere vulgarity of the 
surroundings, the crowd of touts and tourists, the insatiable 
guides, hawkers, singers, beggars, and general rascaldom, 
which has always infested this mountain, as it does now- 
adays most of the great sights of the world. 

To avoid all this weariness and noise is not easy, but it 
is not impossible. Let him who has set his heart on 
seeing Vesuvius, and would avoid the common way, take 
train from Naples to Portici, thence, having put food and 
drink in his satchel, he may climb by the old mule track 
without a guide and without seeing a beggar, a tout, or a 
singer all the way to the summit in something over three 
hours ; the path is almost straight, and always unmistak- 
able, and though it is fatiguing, it is by no means so exhaust- 
ing as the long drive from Naples, and the scrimmage 
and fight with the rascaldom of the mountain which the 
usual route by road and funicular invariably entails. 

Such, at any rate, was the plan I made and followed 




'^ D 



VESUVIUS 8i 

with complete success. Leaving Naples by the morning 
train, I reached Portici about nine o'clock, and before one 
o'clock I was at the summit. There I spent some two 
hours, descending at last by Casa Bianca and Bosco Trecase 
to Pompeii, which I reached just before dark. I thus saw 
a good deal more of the mountain than the traveller by 
the usual route from Naples and back by carriage and 
funicular can hope to do, and upon the way down I skirted 
and crossed the last fields of lava, the beds of the 1906 erup- 
tion, which seemed to me to be especially worth seeing. 

That terrible eruption, the latest, and among the 
greatest on record, was apparently the culmination of 
the new period of activity which began in May 1905. 
For eleven months Vesuvius had been very active, when 
upon the morning of 4th April a new locca opened 
close to the path from the summit to Casa Bianca upon 
the south-east of the cone, near the base of it, at a height 
of nearly 4000 feet. Later upon the same day, the top of 
the cone fell into the crater, and the famous Pine Tree 
cloud appeared at a vast height over the mountain. On 
the following days other bocche opened lower down and 
farther to the east, and from them a vast stream of lava 
issued out, rapidly descending towards Bosco Trecase, 
part of which was destroyed. On the night of 7th April, 
the Pine Tree cloud of ashes over the crater rose to a 
height of some 15,000 feet ; huge rocks and stones were 
flung as far as Ottajano to the north-east. The Pine Tree 
cloud remained over the mountain, growing higher and 
higher, and at last reaching a height of some 30,000 feet, 
till on 20th April, Naples — for the wind blew that way 
— ^was lost in darkness, the streets were covered in ashes 
to a depth of two inches, and the roof of a market-house, 
where the new General Post Office is to stand, was broken 
down by the weight. This was the end of the eruption ; 
but its severity was such that over one hundred persons 
lost their lives, and the whole country to the east of 
Vesuvius was devastated. Nothing of all this is seen by 
6 



82 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

the ordinary route to Vesuvius from Naples. It is only 
upon the descent to Pompeii that some small idea may 
be gained of the appalling horror of such a disaster ; and 
with Pompeii there at the foot of the mountain, the best 
witness of all to the dreadful power of the mountain, one 
cannot but think that a route which gives one all this 
is the best by which to leave Vesuvius. 

Though continually active — that is to say, never really 
quiescent or extinct — Vesuvius would seem to be subject 
to periods of increasing activity, culminating in a vast 
eruption followed by some four hundred years more or 
less of inactivity, after which the mountain begins to stir 
ominously and the whole phenomenon is again repeated. 
The first and by far the most famous of these eruptions 
of which we have record fully bears this out. 

In the year a.d. 63, in the time of the Emperor Nero, 
Vesuvius first began to give signs of life. In the early 
part of that year the whole of the shores of Campania 
suffered severely from the earthquake, which, according to 
Seneca, destroyed at least in great part the towns of 
Pompeii and Herculaneum. In the following year another 
earthquake convulsed the country, and during the following 
sixteen years these appalling shocks were of frequent oc- 
currence. 

Then upon August 24, a.d. 79, in the reign of the 
Emperor Titus, the first eruption of Vesuvius took place, 
which, as we know, buried Pompeii and Herculaneum, and 
stands out in history as one of the most dramatic and 
appalling natural disasters which has ever occurred in 
Europe. That tremendous affair cost the lives of a host 
of poor people, among the few well known to us being the 
Elder Pliny, who was with the Roman fleet at Misenum, 
and the best account we have of it is found in two letters 
which his nephew, the Younger Pliny, wrote at the time to 
Tacitus — 

** Your request that I would send you an account of my 



VESUVIUS 83 

uncle's death, in order to transmit a more exact relation 
of it to posterity, deserves my acknowledgments ; for 
if this accident shall be celebrated by your pen, the glory 
of it, I am well assured, will be rendered for ever illustrious. 
And notwithstanding he perished by a misfortune which, 
as it involved at the same time a most beautiful country 
in ruins and destroyed so many populous cities, seems 
to promise him an everlasting remembrance ; notwith 
standing he has himself composed many and lasting works ; 
yet I am persuaded, the mentioning of him in your 
immortal writings will greatly contribute to eternize his 
name. . . . He was at that time with the fleet under his 
command at Misenum. On the 24th of August, about one 
in the afternoon, my mother desired him to observe a 
cloud which appeared of a very unusual size and shape. 
He had just returned from taking the benefit of the sun, 
and after bathing himself in cold water, and taking a 
slight repast, was retired to his study ; he immediately 
arose and went out upon an eminence, from whence he 
might more distinctly view this very uncommon appear- 
ance. It was not at that distance discernible from what 
mountain this cloud issued, but it was found afterwards 
to ascend from Mount Vesuvius. I cannot give you a 
more exact description of its figure than by resembling 
it to that of a pine tree, for it shot up a great height in the 
form of a trunk, which extended itself at the top into 
sort of branches ; occasioned, I imagine, either by a 
sudden gust of air that impelled it, the force of which 
decreased as it advanced upwards, or the cloud it left being 
pressed back again by its own weight, expanded in this 
manner ; it appeared sometimes bright, and sometimes 
dark and spotted, as it was either more or less impregnated 
with earth and cinders. This extraordinary phenomenon 
excited my uncle's philosophical curiosity to take a nearer 
view of it. He ordered a light vessel to be got ready, 
and gave me the liberty, if I thought proper, to attend 
him. I rather chose to continue my studies ; for, as it 
happened, he had given me an employment of that kind. 
As he was coming out of the house he received a note from 
Rectina, the wife of Bassus, who was in the utmost alarm 
at the imminent danger which threatened her ; for her 
villa being situated at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, there 



84 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

was no way to escape but by sea ; she earnestly intreated 
him therefore to come to her assistance. He accordingly 
changed his first design, and what he began with a philo- 
sophical, he pursued with an heroical turn of mind. He 
ordered the gallies to put to sea, and went himself on 
board with an intention of assisting not only Rectina, 
but several others ; for the villas stand extremely thick 
upon that beautiful coast. When hastening to the place 
from whence others fled with the utmost terror, he steer' d 
his direct course to the point of danger, and with so much 
calmness and presence of mind as to be able to make and 
dictate his observations upon the motion and figure of 
that dreadful scene. He was now so nigh the mountain 
that the cinders, which grew thicker and hotter the nearer 
he approached, fell into the ships, together with pumice- 
stones, and black pieces of burning rock ; they were 
likewise in danger not only of being a-ground by the sudden 
retreat of the sea, but also from the vast fragments which 
rolled down from the mountain, and obstructed all the 
shore. Here he stopped to consider whether he should 
return back again ; to which the pilot advising him, 
Fortune, said he, befriends the brave; Carry me to 
Pomponianus. Pomponianus was then at Stabiae, separ- 
ated by a gulf, which the sea, after several insensible 
windings, forms upon the shore. He had already sent his 
baggage on board ; for tho* he was not at that time in 
actual danger, yet being within the view of it, and indeed 
extremely near, if it should in the least increase, he was 
determined to put to sea as soon as the wind should change. 
It was favorable, however, for carrying my uncle to Pom- 
ponianus, whom he found in the greatest consternation ; 
he embraced him with tenderness, encouraging and exhort- 
ing him to keep up his spirits, and the more to dissipate his 
fears, he ordered, with an air of unconcern, the baths to 
be got ready ; when after having bathed, he sate down 
to supper with great cheerfulness, or at least (what is 
equally heroic) with all the appearance of it. In the 
mean while the eruption from Mount Vesuvius flamed out in 
several places with much violence, which the darkness of 
the night contributed to render still more visible and 
dreadful. But my uncle, in order to sooth the appre- 
hensions of his friend, assured him it was only the burning 



VESUVIUS 85 

of the villages, which the country people had abandoned 
to the flames ; after this he retired to rest, and it is most 
certain that he was so little discomposed as to fall into a 
deep sleep ; for being pretty fat, and breathing hard, those 
who attended without actually hear'd him snore. The 
court which led to his apartment being now almost filled 
with stones and ashes, if he had continued there any time 
longer, it would have been impossible for him to have 
made his way out ; it was thought proper therefore to 
awaken him. He got up, and went to Pomponianus 
and the rest of his company, who were not unconcerned 
enough to think of going to bed. They consulted together 
whether it would be most prudent to trust to the houses, 
which now shook from side to side with frequent and violent 
concussions ; or fly to the open fields, where the calcined 
stones and cinders, tho' light indeed, yet fell in large 
showers, and threatened destruction. In this distress 
they resolved for the fields, as the less dangerous situa- 
tion of the two ; a resolution which, while the rest of 
the company were hurried into by their fears, my uncle 
embraced upon cool and deliberate consideration. They 
went out then, having pillows tied upon their heads with 
napkins ; and this was their whole defence against the 
storm of stones that fell round them. It was now day 
every where else, but there a deeper darkness prevailed 
than in the most obscure night, which, however, was in 
some degree dissipated by torches and other lights of 
various kinds. They thought proper to go down farther 
upon the shore to observe if they might safely put out to 
sea, but they found the waves still run extremely high and 
boisterous. There my uncle having drank a draught or 
two of cold water, threw himself down upon a cloth which 
was spread for him, when immediately the flames, and a 
strong smell of sulphur, which was the forerunner of them, 
dispersed the rest of the company, and obliged him to rise. 
He raised himself up with the assistance of two of his 
servants, and instantly fell down dead ; suffocated, as I 
conjecture, by some gross and noxious vapor, having 
always had weak lungs, and frequently subject to a diffi- 
culty of breathing. As soon as it was light again, which 
was not tiU the third day after this melancholy accident, 
his body was found intire, and without any marks of 



86 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

violence upon it, exactly in the same posture that he fell, 
and looking more like a man asleep than dead. During 

all this time my mother and I, who were at Misenum 

But as this has no connection with your history, so your 
enquiry went no farther than concerning my uncle's death ; 
with that therefore I will put an end to my letter ; suffer 
me only to add, that I have faithfully related to you what 
I was either an eye-witness of myself or received immedi- 
ately after the accident happened, and before there was 
time to vary the truth . You will chose out of this narrative 
such circumstances as shall be most suitable to your purpose; 
for there is a great difference between what is proper for a 
letter, and an history ; between writing to a friend, and 
writing to the public. Farewell." 

"The letter which, in compliance with your request, 
I wrote to you concerning the death of my uncle, has 
raised, it seems, your curiosity to know what terrors and 
dangers attended me while I continued at Misenum ; for 
there, I think, the account in my former broke off. 

Tho' my shock'd soul recoils, my tongtie shall tell. 

" My uncle having left us, I pursued the studies which 
prevented my going with him, till it was time to bathe. 
After which I went to supper, and from thence to bed, 
where my sleep was greatly broken and disturbed. There 
had been for many days before some shocks of an earth- 
quake, which the less surprised us as they are extremely 
frequent in Campania ; but they were so particularly 
violent that night, that they not only shook every thing 
about us, but seemed indeed to threaten total destruction. 
My mother flew to my chamber, where she found me rising, 
in order to awaken her. We went out into a small court 
belonging to the house, which separated the sea from the 
buildings. As I was at that time but eighteen years of 
age, I know not whether I should call my behaviour in 
this dangerous juncture, courage or rashness ; but I took 
up Livy, and amused myself with turning over that author, 
and even making extracts from him, as if all about me had 
been in full security. While we were in this posture, a 
friend of my uncle's, who was just come from Spain to 
pay him a visit, joined us, and observing me sitting by my 



ir^i 




POMPEII 



VESUVIUS 87 

mother with a book in my hand, greatly condemned her 
calmness, at the same time that he reproved me for my 
careless security ; nevertheless I still went on with my 
author. Tho' it was now morning, the light was exceed- 
ingly faint and languid ; the buildings all around us 
tottered, and tho' we stood upon open ground, yet as the 
place was narrow and confined, there was no remaining 
there without certain and great danger ; we therefore 
resolved to quit the town. The people followed us in the 
utmost consternation, and (as to a mind distracted mth 
terror, every suggestion seems more prudent than its own) 
pressed in great crowds about us in our way out. Being 
^ got at a convenient distance from the houses, we stood still, 
in the midst of a most dangerous and dreadful scene. The 
chariots which we had ordered to be drawn out, were so 
agitated backwards and forwards, tho' upon the most 
level ground, that we could not keep them steady, even by 
supporting them with large stones. The sea seemed to 
roll back upon itself, and to be driven from its banks by 
the convulsive motion of the earth ; it is certain at least 
the shore was considerably enlarged, and several sea- 
animals were left upon it. On the other side, a black 
and dreadful cloud bursting with an igneous serpentine 
vapor, darted out a long train of fire, resembling flashes 
of lightning, but much larger. Upon this our Spanish 
friend, whom I mentioned above, addressing himself to 
my mother and me with greater warmth and earnestness : 
If your brother and your uncle, said he, is safe, he certainly 
wishes you may be so too ; but if he perished, it was his 
desire, no doubt, that you might both survive him. Why 
therefore do you delay your escape a moment ? We 
could never think of our own safety, we said, while we were 
uncertain of his. Hereupon our friend left us, and with- 
drew from the danger with the utmost precipitation. 
Soon afterwards, the cloud seemed to descend, and cover 
the whole ocean ; as indeed, it entirely hid the island of 
Caprea, and the promontory of Misenum. My mother 
strongly conjured me to make my escape at any rate, 
which as I was young I might easily do ; as for herself, 
she said, her age and corpulency rendered all attempts of 
the sort impossible ; however, she would willingly meet 
death if she could have the satisfaction of seeing that she 



88 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

was not the occasion of mine. But I absolutely refused to 
leave her, and taking her by the hand, I led her on ; she 
complied with great reluctance, and not without many 
reproaches to herself for retarding my flight. The ashes 
now began to fall upon us, tho' in no great quantity. 
I turned my head, and observed behind us a thick smoke, 
which came rolling after us like a torrent. I proposed, 
while we had yet any light, to turn out of the high road 
lest she should be pressed to death in the dark, by the crowd 
that followed us. We had scarce stepped out of the path, 
when darkness over-spread us, not like that of a cloudy 
night, or when there is no moon, but of a room when it 
is shut up, and all the lights extinct. Nothing then was to 
behear'd but the shrieks of women, the screams of children, 
and the cries of men ; some calling for their children, 
others for their parents, others for their husbands, and only 
distinguishing each other by their voices ; one lamenting 
his own fate, another that of his family ; some wishing to 
die, from the very fear of dying ; some lifting their hands 
to the gods ; but the greater part imagining that the 
last and eternal night was come, which was to destroy 
both the gods and the world together. Among these 
there were some who augmented the real terrors by 
imaginary ones, and made the frightened multitude falsely 
believe that Misenum was actually in flames. At length 
a glimmering light appeared, which we imagined to be 
rather the forerunner of an approaching burst of flames 
(as in truth it was) than the return of day ; however, the 
fire fell at a distance from us ; then again we were immersed 
in thick darkness, and a heavy shower of ashes rained upon 
us, which we were obliged every now and then to shake off, 
otherwise we should have been crushed and buried in the 
heap. I might boast, that during all this scene of horror, 
not a sigh or expression of fear escaped from me, had not 
my support been founded in that miserable, tho' strong 
consolation, that all mankind were involved in the same 
calamity, and that I imagined I was perishing with the 
world itself. At last this dreadful darkness was dissipated 
by degrees like a cloud or smoke ; the real day returned, 
and even the sun appeared, tho' very faintly, and as when 
an eclipse is coming on. Every object that presented 
itself to our eyes (which were extremely weakened) seemed 



VESUVIUS 89 

changed, being cover' d over with white ashes, as with a 
deep snow. We returned to Misenum, where we refreshed 
ourselves as well as we could, and passed an anxious night 
between "hope and fear ; tho' indeed, with a much larger 
share of the latter ; for the earthquake still continued, 
while several enthusiastic people ran up and down, heighten- 
ing their own and their friends' calamities by terrible pre- 
dictions. However, my mother and I, notwithstanding 
the danger we had passed, and that which still threatened 
us, had no thoughts of leaving the place, till we should 
receive some account from my uncle. . . . 

*' And now, you will read this narrative without any 
view of inserting it in your history, of which it is by no 
means worthy ; and indeed you must impute it to your 
own request, if it shall appear scarce to deserve even the 
trouble of a letter. Farewell." 

The value of these letters which Pliny modestly de- 
precates is really inestimable, for they contain the only 
account that we have by an eye-witness of the first and 
greatest eruption of Vesuvius. 

It wiU be noted that Pliny does not speak of any flow 
of lava, and it seems certain that none issued from the 
mountain on that occasion ; the crater spewed up ashes, 
stones, and great clouds of dense vapour, which presently 
descended upon the earth as torrential rain charged with 
mud. This especially deluged Herculaneum, which was 
quite covered with it, while Pompeii was buried under 
stones and ashes. 

After this appaUing awakening Vesuvius seems to have 
been quiet for near four hundred years ; at least we have no 
record of any further eruption until the year 472, when 
Procopius notes that after an eruption of Vesuvius even 
Constantinople was littered with ashes. This occurred 
again in 512, when the same writer tells us that even upon 
the littoral of Africa the ashes and dust spewed up by 
Vesuvius were to be seen. In 1036 and in 1500 other 
eruptions occurred, but thereafter no other is recorded 
until the calamity of December 1631. In 1538, however. 



90 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

in the midst of this period of quiescence, the volcanic forces 
threw up Monte Nuovo on the Phlegrsean fields, as we have 
seen. 

The eruption of December 1631 was the most appalling, 
after that of a.d. 79, of which we have any knowledge. It 
was upon i6th December, after nearly six months of earth- 
quakes, that the crater poured out upon the south-west 
a huge volume of smoke, loaded with ashes and charged 
with lightning, which, after assuming the Pine Tree form 
over the mountain, spread all over the country, carrying 
death and destruction. No less than seven streams of lava 
poured out upon this occasion, one towards Torre Annun- 
ziata, as we may still see, one towards Torre del Greco, 
which was largely destroyed, another upon Resina and 
the old site of Herculaneum, and another towards Portici, 
where it streamed into the sea. The earthquake which 
accompanied this awful visitation caused the sea to 
retire for over half a mile, and to return with such disorder 
and violence that the whole coast was inundated. In all, 
more than 18,000 people perished. 

Less violent eruptions occurred in 1660 and in 1707, 
and indeed the eighteenth century is full of the minor 
activities of the mountain, the worst of which was that 
which began in February 1793 and continued till June 
1794, in which Torre del Greco again suffered so terribly 
that Ferdinand iv attempted, though without success, 
to forbid the people to rebuild the town on the old site. 

During the nineteenth century Vesuvius was com- 
paratively quiet. Eruptions occurred in 1822, 1855, 1861, 
and 1 87 1, but the worst eruption within living memory 
was that of 1906, in which the country suffered severely, 
as I have said. After each eruption the whole form of 
the cone has been changed : thus in 1632 it was over 
1500 feet lower than its companion Monte Somma, and 
in 1832 the great cone, which had piled itself up again, 
fell in with a sound like thunder, the vapour and dust 
rising to a height of 10,000 feet. A similar phenomenon 



POMPEII 91 

occurred in 1906. The beautiful pyramidal cone, which 
no one who saw it can forget, and which reigned in superb 
beauty over the paradise of sea and valley and mountain, 
was truncated, so that to-day you look from Naples upon 
what appear to be twin peaks, the crater being indeed 
only distinguishable by the exquisite feather of smoke 
streaming from its summit. 

And so the ascent of Vesuvius must always be full of 
fascination, almost irresistible in its attraction ; but it can 
never be anything but fatiguing, however it be achieved, 
and it is perhaps the dirtiest business that modem methods 
of travel have left us. The loose ashes of the cone, fine 
black dust, penetrate alike boots and clothes, and ruin 
both ; and indeed the only drawback to the descent into 
Pompeii, instead of the return to Naples, is the fact that 
it is so difficult to get a proper bath at Pompeii. 

No one will think, I should hope, to climb Vesuvius and 
to visit Pompeii in one day ; but if there should be one 
with such a hope, let him prepare for disappointment. 
No one can do it with any sort of satisfaction. The 
almost aimless wandering about the '' city disinterred " is 
if anything more fatiguing than the ascent of the mountain, 
and he who is wise will come into Pompeii prepared to 
spend a night at the Hotel Diomede, or the humbler 
Albergo del Sole, which in spite of everything is a charming 
hostelry. 

Nothing, I think, to be seen an5Avhere else in Europe 
is at once so monstrously dreary and so moving as this 
strange city of broken hovels and narrow-paved lanes, 
which once boasted some 20,000 inhabitants. It is, 
of course, a great misfortune for us of the modern world 
that Pompeii was not overwhelmed by Vesuvius in a.d. 63, 
when she was overthrown by an earthquake, rather than 
in A.D. 79, when the final catastrophe actually happened. 
What we see is not the ruin of the town that Cicero loved, 
but the town half rebuilt by the ruined inhabitants in 
the Roman style, upon the old site, and largely with the 



92 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

old remains. It is, partly for this reason, then, very 
disappointing. And yet what else in aU Europe can we 
compare with it ? 

Pompeii was one of the most ancient cities of Campania, 
situated in the Bay of Naples at the mouth of the Samus, 
intermediate between Herculaneum and Stabiae. Tradition 
ascribes its foundation, like that of Herculaneum, to 
Hercules, who along this shore, as we have seen beside the 
Lucrine Lake, drove the bulls of Geryon. Strabo says that 
the town was first in the possession of the Oscans, later 
of the Etruscans, and at last, before the advent of the 
Romans, in the hands of the Samnites. It seems always 
to have been a flourishing place, probably on account of 
its situation at the mouth of the Sarnus, in the rich valley 
watered by that stream. It appears in history for the 
first time in 310 B.C., when a Roman fleet under Publius 
Cornelius anchored there, and disembarked troops to 
ravage the territory of Nuceria ; but we hear nothing 
further of it until the time of the Social War, in which it 
took a prominent part against Sulla, who besieged it, 
with what result we do not know, but that the city came 
into his hands is certain ; and this was probably by sur- 
render, for its inhabitants were presently admitted to 
the Roman franchise. It was then its famous career 
as a Roman pleasure resort began. The great villas of 
the wealthy in its immediate neighbourhood were many, 
and among the most famous of them was that of Cicero, 
called Pompeianum, which he loved as dearly as he was 
capable of loving anything. In the time of the Empire, 
doubtless its wealth and amenities increased. Seneca 
praises its delicious situation, and both he and Tacitus 
speak of it as a populous place. In the reign of Nero a 
riot broke out in the amphitheatre of the town, a sort of 
faction fight between a colony of Nucerians, which Augustus 
had established there, and the citizens, in which many 
were killed ; and in punishment for this disturbance of the 
public peace, the Pompeians were forbidden all gladiatorial 



POMPEII 93 

shows or theatrical entertainments during ten years. 
Not four of these had passed when the whole town was 
overthrown by the great earthquake of a.d. 63, the public 
buildings suffering especially severely ; and as we have 
seen, the place had not recovered itself when, in a.d. 79, 
the famous first eruption of Vesuvius befell, in which 
Pompeii as well as Herculaneum was buried, only to be 
brought to light seventeen hundred years later. 

When that appalling calamity fell upon the city the 
people, it is said, were assembled in the amphitheatre, 
though, remembering the prohibition, for what purpose 
we cannot say. The greater number of them seem, there- 
fore, to have escaped, and very few bodies have been dis- 
covered. We really know nothing of the disaster. Pliny 
does not speak of it in his account of the eruption, and no 
one else has left a record. All we know has been won from 
the earth httle by little, by excavation, and this in our 
own and our fathers' time. For so complete and over- 
whelming was the disaster, so utterly was the city lost, 
that Pompeii from that time disappears from history. 
Perhaps a small village may have risen upon the site, but 
in the Middle Age even the site was forgotten ; no one, not 
the most learned, could say where it might be, for the very 
river had changed its course, as we may still see, and the 
whole countryside had been transformed by the disaster. 

Excavation, however, has confirmed us in what history 
had taught us to suspect — to wit, that Pompeii was but a 
third-rate provincial town, though now its name is as 
famous as that of the greatest of cities. Thus, too, we have 
learned that it was not overwhelmed by a torrent of lava, 
nor, as Herculaneum was, embedded in a vast deposit of 
mud which has hardened into tufa ; it was simply buried 
under ashes and dust and lapilli, light and porous and 
easily removed, though this covering lies some fifteen feet 
thick over the ruins. And it seems certain that so little 
of intrinsic value has been found under this pall which has 
preserved so perfectly things of the utmost artistic value 



94 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

and interest to us, because the earthquake of a.d. 63 had 
already destroyed the place, which had by no means re- 
covered from that calamity when the final disaster of a.d. 79 
overwhelmed it for ever. 

I do not know how to express what one feels when one 
comes along the alley way behind the Hotel Diomede and 
enters into this " city disinterred," as Shelley called it, 
by the Porta Marina, following the way uphill into the 
Forum between the Temple of Jupiter and the Basilica, 
the Temple of Apollo and the Temple of Vespasian. One's 
eyes turn first, I think, almost instinctively to Vesuvius, still 
smoking there, in all its beauty of colour and form like 
some lovely evil thing watching still over the bones of its 
victim. But presently one turns away to pass, with what 
weariness at last, through this little city which seems so 
vast, so endless ; where there is nothing — a toy city of 
hovels and styes, of houses so small and so ill-lighted for 
the most part that not the wretchedest of our industrial 
slums nor the poorest cottages of our peasants can com- 
pare with them. And yet in some curious way this toy 
city strangely resembles Naples itself, its unbreakable 
silence is as oppressive as her ceaseless noise ; it is as though 
one wandered endlessly nowhither, without object and 
without rest, in a dream, a dream in which one had stepped 
over an awful chasm in whose annihilation lie twenty 
centuries, and the mind staggers before the reality of 
what we had thought to be so great. Hither men came 
from Imperial Rome, as to a pleasure resort — to these 
little mean houses. 

It is the reality, not the dream, which overwhelms you 
at last. Here are the very ways up which Cicero went, 
the ruts of the wagon wheels still deep in the stones — 
these narrow ways across which you may leap without 
effort from side to side. Here cheek by jowl stand the 
two public edifices, the Temple and the brothel ; here 
men worshipped under the blue sky, there . . . 

And everywhere you see the little houses, sometimes 



POMPEII 95 

just drawn as it were from the grave, the frescoes still 
fresh on the walls, the little images in their places beside 
the fountain, and about the courtyard even flowers. Here 
they lived. If you go out by the Herculaneum Gate you 
may see their tombs, all beside the way, a long avenue 
where lie the ancestors of those who saw the catastrophe. 
And if you have the courage to creep into that ghastly 
museum by the sea gate you may see even those who suffered 
it, who fled too late from the amphitheatre by the Porta di 
Samo to the east of the city, who returned for their gold 
or their treasure, to look for their children or to find a 
friend, or who never left home upon that tragic day when 
the mountain bellowed with thunder and the darkness and 
vileness of the heart of the earth rose suddenly and de- 
scended upon this place in the face of the sun. There 
they lie, the young matron beside the slave, the mother 
by the daughter, close together. . . . Ah, why should our 
curiosity demand so horrible an outrage as this ? 



V 

CASTELLAMMARE, SORRENTO, AND CAPRI 

THE road from Pompeii to Castellammare di Stabia 
crosses the broad valley of the Sarno, the Valle di 
Pompeii, as it is called, the easternmost part of the great 
plain of Campania on which Vesuvius and the Neapolitan 
hiU stand up like two great lonely islands, not far from the 
shore. It is a way without interest in itself, and indeed 
would be without beauty but for the great hiUs, the Monti 
Lattari, which rise ever before one in all their various 
loveliness, and form at last the steep and lofty promontory 
of Sorrento. 

Nor is CasteUammare itself of much interest, though its 
situation in the curve of the bay where those hills first 
meet the sea is of much beauty. A busy fishing village 
that has become a royal dockyard where ships for the 
Italian navy are built, a favourite resort of the Neapolitans 
in summer-time, Castellammare di Stabia would be without 
interest for us, would depend, and wisely, only upon the 
beauty of its surroundings for its dehght, if its very name 
did not establish it as the late successor of the ancient city 
of Stabiae which was destroyed by the calamity of a.d. 
79. The old city stood perhaps a Httle to the north of 
the present town, at the foot of the Mons Lactarius and a 
mile from the sea. We know nothing of it till it suddenly 
appears in the Social War, 90 B.C., when it was taken by 
the Samnite general Caius Papius; and indeed it would 
seem to have given itself to him, for in the following year 

Sulla retook the place, and utterly destroyed it, nor did 

96 



CASTELLAMMARE 97 

it ever recover itself. At the time of the famous eruption, 
Pliny tells us it was a mere village, and though doubtless 
it boasted of many a fair villa, of which probably the 
greatest was that of Pomponianus, where the Elder PHny 
took refuge in vain, for he perished there upon that terrible 
night, the only other writer who mentions its name is 
Ovid, who speaks of it incidentally with other towns in 
this neighbourhood in his Metamorphoses — 

Inde legit Capreas, promontoriumque Minerva, 
Et Surrentino generosos pal mite colles, 
Herculeamque urbem, Stabiasque, et in otia natam 
Parthenopen, et at hac Cumaese templa Sibyllse. 

The awful calamity buried the village of Stable under 
its ashes and cinders, though less completely, for it was 
farther off, than Herculaneum or Pompeii. Its site 
never ceased to be inhabited, and it appears all through the 
Imperial period as a resort for invaUds, in part on account 
of its mineral waters, which are still sought after, and in part 
for the milk of its cows, which grazed upon the Mons 
Lactarius. In 1750 the site of the ancient city was dis- 
covered by accident, and since then a certain amount of 
excavation has been accomplished, but with little result 
save for a few wall-paintings now in the Naples Museum. 

The modern, or rather the mediaeval, town of Castellam- 
mare dates from the thirteenth century, when the Emperor 
Frederick II built a castle here, Charles 11 of Anjou walling 
the town which had grown up about it, fortifications 
enlarged and strengthened by Alfonso of Aragon. Besides 
thus fortifying the town, Charles 11 built a palace on the 
hillside, which was a favourite residence of Queen Giovanna 
II. But this old royal palace of the Angevins perished. 
The Bourbons, to whom the town owes the estabhshment 
of its arsenal and docks, erected in its place the delicious 
Casino of Quisisana, now an hotel. It is this Casino with 
its park and woods which is the greatest deUght of Cas- 
tellammare ; apart from its delicious walks, indeed, the 
7 



98 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

place has little to show, in spite of its busy quay and arsenal. 
Castellammare, however, makes with its good hotel and 
delicious surroundings by far the best centre for excur- 
sions in this part of the bay. Pompeii is most easily 
reached from it, and Monte S. Angelo, with its great view 
beyond Terracina, of the Central Apennines and of the 
mountains beyond Psestum, with all the great bays of 
Gaeta, of Naples, of Amalfi, of Salerno, of Policastro, may 
be climbed thence in about four hours. 

But undoubtedly the greatest delight which Castellam- 
mare has to bestow upon the traveller is the coast road to 
Sorrento, of which she holds the key. There are in all 
Europe but three other routes corniches with which this 
can be compared — that between Nice and Mentone upon the 
French Riviera, that between Genova and Sestri upon the 
Riviera di Levante, and that, really a continuation of this 
from Castellammare to Sorrento, the coast road from 
Sorrento to Amalfi and on to Vietri. Each of these has 
its own peculiar charm and delight, and one is inclined to 
declare each in turn the most beautiful ; but knowing them 
all, I think at least this may be said, that for variety and 
astonishment, for beauty of colour and old romance, those 
of the south surpass altogether those of the Rivieras. 
Nothing could well be more different from the road between 
Sorrento and Vietri than this between Castellammare and 
Sorrento, and here at any rate one may well refuse to be 
sure which he prefers. 

The road climbs up out of Castellammare under the old 
convent of Pozzano, founded by Gonsalvo de Cordova 
in the sixteenth century upon the site, it is said, of a Temple 
of Diana. The church still contains a venerable image of 
the Blessed Virgin miraculously discovered as long ago 
as the eleventh century in a well in the crypt, but notliing 
else of interest. It is here the glory of the road begins 
beside the sea, passing Capo d' Orlando under the great 
cliffs covered with cyticus, where Ruggiero d'Oria broke 
the fleet of Frederick ii in 1299, through many a little 



SORRENTO 99 

village crossing about^ half-way to Sorrento into Vice 
Equense, the twin towns Vico and Equa, which the Romans 
too called Vicus iEquanus. Vico, founded by Charles ii 
of Anjou on the ruins of the old Roman town which the 
Goths had destroyed, is most picturesquely set upon a 
round and isolated hill amid beautiful olive gardens and 
orange groves, and is best seen farther on from the next 
hill- top village, Seiano. Hence the road climbs to the Punta 
di Scutolo, whence one may see the whole of the Piano 
di Sorrento, the lofty, tableland 300 feet over the sea which 
forms the great headland. Descending through the love- 
liest groves of olive, pomegranate, and orange to Meta, 
where the church of the Madonna del Lauro is said to occupy 
the site of a Temple of Diana, the road enters by a deep 
ravine the great plain of the headland, passing through 
every sort of delicious grove and garden at last into the city 
of Sorrento, which in all ages has been famous for its health, 
its beauty, and its wine. 

The city of Sorrento, the city of S. Antonino, the seat 
of a bishop, is one of the most curiously situated towns 
in Europe. It stands upon a great platform 300 feet or 
more over the sea out of which the great cliffs stand up 
sheer with only the narrowest of beaches, where are two 
small fishing harbours — the Marina Grande to the south, 
the Marina Piccola to the north. The town is wholly 
delightful and full of the happiness of busy people straw- 
plaiting, lace-making, or carving the olive wood here so 
plentifully provided by nature. The whole place is a 
garden enclosed, Saracen in appearance with its white 
houses and flat roofs and shining cupolas, and especially 
in this that every garden is enclosed within a white wall, 
every orange grove is hidden, and so completely that but 
for the overpowering scent of orange blossom which fills 
all the by-ways you would not suspect the gardens you 
cannot see. Certainly there is something secret — how 
shaU I say ? — something sacred and withdrawn about 
Sorrento, so that you are not surprised to learn that of 



100 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

old it with its territory, all this plana, was consecrated to 
Minerva, whose especial sanctuary was the great and famous 
temple set upon the promontory which bore her name, 
Minervae Promontorium, and which we to-day call the 
Punta della Campanella, because Charles v erected there 
a Martello tower and hung a bell in it, which it was the 
business of the watchmen to strike with a great mallet, and 
thus to give warning of the approach of the Barbary 
pirates who constantly raped all this coast. 

That Temple of Minerva is said to have been founded 
by Ulysses, but it remains extremely doubtful whether 
Sorrento was ever a Greek city. Strabo certainly calls it 
Campanian, and though for all that it may have received 
Greek settlers from Cumse or elsewhere, we know nothing 
of it till the time of the Empire, when Augustus planted 
there a colony. It too became a resort of the wealthy 
Roman nobility, especially it would seem on account of 
its climate, sheltered as it is from the south wind and the 
sun ; and we learn from Stabius that his friend Pollius 
Felix had a villa there, upon which he writes a delightful 
poem. But the real fame of the Roman Surrentum was 
due to its wine, which did not attain to perfection till it 
had been kept for twenty-five years, and of which all the 
poets sing, as Martial when he asks — 

Surrentina bibis ? nee myrrhina picta, nee aurum 
Sume ; dabunt calices haee tibi vina suos . . . 

and Horace, when speaking of dinner parties, strangely 
bids us to " mix skilfully wine of Surrentum with the 
dregs of Falernian and thoroughly collect the sediment 
with a pigeon's egg, for the yoke sinks to the bottom, carry- 
ing with it all foreign substances." Martial and Horace 
may have been right, but the traveller to-day will be more 
likely to agree with Tiberius Csesar, who is said to have 
declared that the wine of Surrentum owed its reputation 
entirely to the physicians, being in reality no better than 
vinegar. 



SORRENTO loi 

The Roman remains in Sorrento in spite of all this 
are negligible, consisting merely of fragments built into the 
archbishop's palace, the Cathedral and S. Antonino, and to 
the ancient Piscina opposite the Hotel Victoria which still 
supplies the town with water. 

In the Middle Age Sorrento became an independent 
republic, but its records are scanty ; it never had the fame or 
the prosperity of Salerno or Amalfi, and subsequently came 
into the power of the Dukes of Naples, and has shared the 
fate of that city ever since. I suppose its chief claim to 
celebrity in the Renaissance was the fact that Torquato 
Tasso was born there in a house where now stands an 
hotel — the Albergo Tasso — upon March ii, 1544 ; but 
nothing of the old house would seem to remain. Miserable 
and half mad, Tasso returned to Sorrento in disguise in 
1592 after his unhappy experience in Ferrara. He appeared 
in the dress of a peasant at the house of his sister Cornelia 
in the Strada S. Nicola. He represented himself as a 
messenger come from her brother, and frightened her nearly 
out of her senses with a long story of the poet's ill-treat- 
ment. Then he revealed himself, and the gentle lady took 
him in and cared for him. 

To-day Sorrento owes everything to her surroundings, 
which are so full of delight that a whole summer spent here 
cannot exhaust them. First among these stands the 
Capo di Sorrento, the western point of the great headland, 
which is still covered with Roman ruins, the villa perhaps 
of PoUius, which Statins describes as looking upon this 
western bay, and where the picturesque remains called 
the Bagno della Regina Giovanna, an ancient arched 
piscina, afford one of the no blest views of the great bay with 
Vesuvius rising beyond the blue sea. Thence eastward 
you may wander along the cliffs or up to the Deserto, the 
old Franciscan convent, whence there is another glorious 
view embracing the two bays of Naples and of Salerno, with 
Capri before you and Monte S. Angelo in the background. 
There too in the bay of Salerno you may §ee the Islands 



102 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

of the Sirens, Li Galli as they are called to-day. There 
was undoubtedly here on the headland a famous sanctuary 
of the Sirens from which Surrentum itself was supposed to 
derive its name. It is amusing, though in vain, to seek a 
place so famous, but you find., by the way, how much un- 
looked-for beauty, which indeed is the best of all. 

But the great excursion from Sorrento must always be 
that to Capri, only an hour away by steamer. Starting 
in the morning at ten when the steamer comes in from 
Naples, a whole day may be spent on the island and the 
return made at four o'clock ; but no one who gives thus 
but a few hours to Capri can really expect to see anything 
with pleasure, not even the Blue Grotto. It is far better 
to spend at least one night upon the island, where in Capri 
itself at any rate there are excellent hotels ; by this means 
something at least may be had in quietness and apart from 
the crowd. 

Capri stands but three miles from Capo Sorrento and, 
as Pliny knew, is about eleven miles in circuit. It is like 
the mountain range here to the south of the bay of 
Naples, of which it is indeed a part, formed wholly 
of limestone, a great precipitous limestone rock rising 
abruptly out of the sea, and in many places to a con- 
siderable height, especially in the western part, now called 
Anacapri, a name thought to be derived from the Greek 
at avo) KaTT/oeat, where it attains at least 1600 feet. 
The eastern part is a vast precipitous hill especially steep 
towards the mainland, and between it and the western 
highlands is a saddle upon which the little town of Capri 
stands with its two landing-places, the only ones on the 
island east and west. 

Of the history of Capri before the Imperial period we 
know really nothing. Virgil in the seventh ^neid alludes 
to it : '' Nor shall you pass untold in my verses (Ebalus, 
the son of Telon by the nymph Sebethis, as tradition teUs, 
in the days that he ruled Capreae of the Teleboans, now 
advanced in years . . ." ; but who the Telebo^ were 



CAPRI 103 

we are uncertain, though we may connect them with the 
pirates who dwelt on the islands of the Echinades off the 
coast of Acarnania. But whatever of Greek customs and 
culture the people of Capri may have possessed might 
seem really to be due to the Neapolitans, into whose 
hands the island came. 

It was Augustus who first made Capri known. He 
landed, took a fancy to the place, because he met with a 
favourable omen there, and at length made it a part of 
the Imperial dominion, giving the Neapolitans instead 
the larger and wealthier island of Ischia. Capri he visited 
repeatedly, going there indeed but four days before his 
death. 

If Capri owes thus her introduction to the world to 
Augustus, she owes all her fame to Tiberius, or rather 
to the scandalous stories that Tacitus, Suetonius, and 
Juvenal have not scrupled to invent or to repeat con- 
cerning this much-libelled prince. Tiberius, they tell us, 
established himself permanently upon the island in a.d. 27, 
and there spent the last ten years of his life in every sort 
of debauchery. Tacitus, indeed, always a curious psy- 
chologist, asserts that it was not the perfection of the 
climate, so much more temperate than that of the main- 
land, which charmed the Emperor, but the seclusion and 
inaccessible nature of the island, in which he was secure 
from danger and observation to deliver himself up to the 
most extraordinary debaucheries enhanced by an in- 
famous cruelty. It is well to remember, when listening 
to the malicious gossip of these writers, that when Tiberius 
took up his residence in Capri and deserted Roman society, 
he was more than sixty-eight years old. A great soldier, 
the better part of his life had been spent in the field, and 
when at last, at the age of fifty-six, he succeeded Augustus 
in A.D. 14, the incorrigible sensuality of youth was far 
behind him. Even Suetonius, who hated him, admits 
that the first eight years of his reign were marked by a 
fine justice and personal frugality ; and though the foUow- 



104 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

ing six years were less happy — more than a hundred 
persons suffering death for conspiracy — there is not any- 
thing in the character of the Emperor which would lead 
us to suppose him a victim of a gross animalism that 
was fast driving him towards insanity. It was unwise 
to leave Rome in the power of Sejanus, but not idiotic; 
and the tragedies which had befallen his house — the murder 
of Agrippa Postumus, the strange death of Germanicus in 
the East, the poisoning of his son Drusus, the exile of 
Agrippina — are quite enough to account for his retirement 
from the world to Capri. Certainly the gloom of his last 
years suggests a sort of despair, which led him to strike 
down Sejanus for dreaming of the purple, only to put a 
worse monster in his place ; and the crimes of Macro 
seem to have moved him little. He was after all a man 
of action, unused to the subtle malice and enervating 
luxury of the Roman world, and it may well be that such 
a one found in Capri a peace and a quietness which would 
merely have bored Suetonius or Tacitus, and which 
certainly they were incapable of understanding. How- 
ever, this at least is certain, that here upon the island 
of Capri the Emperor spent the last ten years of his life, 
and here he erected twelve palaces, each in a different 
part of the island, the remains of several of which are still 
visible. The largest of these would seem to have been 
that on the summit of the cliff facing the promontory of 
Sorrento, which Pliny calls the Arx Tiberii, but which 
Suetonius calls the Villa Jovis. The remains of some 
of these villas have been built into the curious domed 
church of S. Costanzo. Close by the Villa Jovis are the 
remains of the Roman Pharos, which guided the ships 
through the straits on their way to Puteoli. 

One climbs up from the Marina by the steep and lonely 
road to the little town of Capri, under its great rock, past 
the church of S. Costanzo to the Piazza, close to which 
stands the many-domed Cathedral of the Vescovo delle 
Quaglie, the Bishop of the Quails, as the Bishop of Capri 



CAPRI 105 

is called, because these birds in their spring and autumn 
journeys to and from Egypt and the northern plains rest 
in such numbers upon the island that they far outnumber 
the inhabitants. 

In the Piazza is a tablet to Major Hamill, who is buried 
in the Cathedral, and this serves to remind us that Capri 
was once held and governed by us for two years and a 
half, having been captured by Sir Sidney Smith in 1806. 
In January of that year. Sir Sidney having been promoted 
Rear-Admiral, hoisted his flag on board the Pompey for 
service in the Mediterranean, where Lord Collingwood em- 
ployed him in a detached command upon the coast of 
Naples. Here he successfully broke the French, incurring 
at the same time the hostility of the English military 
officers, and especially of Sir John Moore, who failed to 
understand the merits of this very egotistical and extrava- 
gant hero. In the course of his affairs, mostly affairs of 
outposts, he took in May the island of Capri, which was 
immediately garrisoned by a detachment of British troops 
under Sir Hudson Lowe, who thus had considerable 
experience of an island before he went as Napoleon's 
keeper to St. Helena. Lowe occupied Capri with head- 
quarters at the Certosa from June 11, 1806, till October 
30, 1808, when after thirteen days' siege, the Malta 
regiment having been made prisoners at Anacapri and 
the defences of the town broken, he surrendered the place 
to General Lamarque, marching out with the garrison 
and the arms and baggage. Lowe always asserted that 
this disaster was due to absence of naval support as 
much as to the misconduct of the Malta regiment. In 
spite of Napier, who blames him severely, he was probably 
right, and military opinion would seem to support his 
contention. 

Out of the Piazza you pass under an arch to the hotels, 
and thence by a bridal path up to the ruins of one of the 
villas of Tiberius, set on a great precipice some 700 feet 
high, whence, according to Suetonius, Tiberius u§ed to 



io6 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

have his victims thrown into the sea, where a band of 
men from the Roman fleet received them, and broke 
their bones with clubs and oars, lest any life should be 
left in them. 

Not far away are the ruins of the Villa Jo vis, above 
which stands the chapel of S. Maria del Soccorso, which 
marks the spot where Tiberius, according to Suetonius, 
had his celebrated encounter with the fisherman. It 
seems that not long after Tiberius landed in Capri, a 
fisherman came upon him where he wished to be alone, 
and presented him with a large mullet, when he com- 
manded that the man's face should be scrubbed with the 
fish, for he was terrified when he saw that anyone could 
approach him unawares. The man expressed his satis- 
faction that he had not offered the Emperor a large crab 
which he had also taken ; whereupon Tiberius commanded 
that his face should also be torn with its claws. I do 
not know why I am at the trouble of repeating such rubbish, 
except that to repeat it is to refute it. If the Empire 
at its very inception had been administered by such 
methods as these, it would not have endured as it did, 
nor have been capable as it was of producing the Middle 
Age and the modern world. 

Many are the other ruins upon this island and innumer- 
able are its various delights, and especially its glorious 
views over the sea and the mainland ; but the most famous 
spectacle upon the island is the Blue Grotto, usually visited 
from the steamer, and therefore as good as not seen at all, 
for it requires time to enjoy it, and that is just what the 
steamer will not spare. 

The best way to visit this beautiful cavern and to avoid 
disappointment, a disappointment most often due to hurry, 
is to engage a boat at the Marina any tranquil morning 
and to row past the Baths of Tiberius, whose vast ruins may 
still be seen from the sea, to the Blue Grotto, a journey of 
something under an hour. The arch by which one enters the 
cavern is scarcely three feet high, and it is therefore necessary 



CAPRI 107 

to lie down in the boat as it passes through the low and 
narrow opening into this cave of marvels. At first nothing 
remarkable will appear, but little by little, as the eyes accus- 
tom themselves to the light, the wonderful colour of the 
grotto will be seen, and after about a quarter of an hour the 
whole cave will assume an exquisite sapphire blue, especi- 
ally if the entrance be blocked by another boat. The 
grotto is about 160 feet by 100 feet, and at its loftiest some 
40 feet. To the right is a platform leading to a broken 
stairway and tunnel in the rock which of old led up to a 
villa of Tiberius above. 

This grotto, which is worth any trouble to see in leisurely 
fashion, is, however, the only one worth a visit upon the 
island. It makes a delightful giro all a summer morning 
to voyage in a small boat quite round Capri ; but the Green 
Grotto, the Red Grotto, and the White Grotto are merely 
ordinary caves, and require the enlightening imagination 
to fill them with the various colours of which they boast 
in their names. He is wise who lets them go and gives 
himself up to the ordinary delights of the voyage, which, 
it is needless to'_say, can be extended in what direction you 
will, to Amalfi or to Ischia, with perfect confidence and 
safety, so the weather be fair and settled ; for the sailors of 
Capri are famous, and know the bay as none do on the 
mainland. And what more delicious way of spending the 
summer days can there be than in such voyages as these 
between dawn and ten o'clock, between afternoon and 
midnight ? 



VI 

THE COAST ROAD FROM SORRENTO TO 
VIETRI, AMALFI, AND RAVELLO 

IF the road from Castellammare to Sorrento is one of 
the loveliest in the world, that from Sorrento to Amalfi 
and on to Vietri beggars description. The way lies first 
along the road to Castellammare as far as Botteghelle, 
where it turns uphill suddenly eastward under Vico Alvano, 
and passing up the loveliest of valleys filled with orange 
groves and olive gardens climbs through more than one 
little village till at S. Pietro it suddenly turns the corner of 
the Colline del Piano, crosses that watershed, and begins 
to descend towards the Gulf of Salerno. 

The way so far from Sorrento no words might seem to 
be lovely enough to describe. It is so full of the softest 
and most luxurious beauty, heavy with the scent of orange 
blossom, and noble with groves and gardens, that it seems, 
what indeed it is, a land of lotus-eaters, where it is always 
afternoon. 

All the wonderful luxury and softness disappears, how- 
ever, immediately the watershed is crossed, and on coming 
into the Gulf of Salerno, a great rugged and lofty coast 
stretches out before one, rising steeply and victoriously 
out of the virile beauty of the sea ; and aloft upon the 
coast runs the road half-way up between the mountains 
and the waves, a true corniche suspended as it were over the 
waters, carved and built out of the cliffs all the way, twenty 
miles or more to Amalfi, and indeed on to Vietri, within 
sight of Salerno itself. I know not how best to convey to 

iq8 



FROM SORRENTO TO AMALFI log 

the reader the vigorous beauty and pleasure of this mar- 
vellous highway high over the sea winding along the cliffs 
half-way up, about the mighty headlands and through the 
steep, half- eastern villages and little towns of this tre- 
mendous coast. There is nothing else in Italy to compare 
with it. In its adventurous glory it is to the corniches of 
the French and Italian Rivieras what the Alps are to the 
English Downs — it makes a man laugh for joy ; and there 
the wind comes over the wine-faced sea with all the strength 
and rapture of old time. Let no one who by hook or by 
crook can spare two days for complete happiness forgo this 
glorious way for any other. This is the road to Amalfi : let 
no one seek out that little great city from La Cava if he can 
help it, for this is the road at the end of which Amalfi shines 
like a prize, in the glow of evening, in the pale light of the 
first stars, in the twilight of the summer night. 

And there is this too about the road : it alone gives you, 
and without an afterthought, aU this coast, upon which 
seems to be graven in white sepulchral hieroglyphic, as 
upon some marvellous tomb in a garden by the sea, the 
signature and the epigraph of the Saracen. It is stiU full 
of the south-east, the white-turbaned pirates, the infidel, 
and the stranger whose prey it was, it and its city, when 
Charlemagne was dead or ever the Norman rode into the 
land. In those little white towns with their shining 
minarets and their flat roofs and palm trees and agaves 
you seem to see the ghastly wounds, the cicatrices of the 
Saracen as certainly as those of the last earthquake. Here 
Mohammed scrawled his horrid name, and it stiU grins at 
you like a skull on the forehead of all this country. 

At Positano, for instance, the first little town upon the 
road, it is easy to see how first it was all a Marina set about 
its little bay, a village of fishermen ; but with the advent 
of the Asiatic once more into this sea, which is the heart 
of Europe, Positano fled up from the seashore to the 
summit of the rocky hill, where, though she has in some 
sort returned to the shore, she still sits enthroned. All 



no NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

this seems very truly to be summed up and expressed by 
the curious reHef in the church of S. Maria Assunta there, 
where was carved a strange sea-monster with the hair of a 
wolf and the tail of a serpent, swallowing a fish. It is 
said to be Greek work and to have come from the Temple 
of Poseidon, which once stood in this place and from which 
it got its name of Positano ; but since it is so apt and so true 
in its representation of the pirates, who can believe that it 
does not refer to them ? 

Positano in the time of the Angevins became a place of 
some importance. It was fortified by the great Charles in 
his struggle with the last of the Hohenstaufen, when the 
Ghibelline fleet of Pisa attacked the place, stormed and 
sacked it, and burnt the Angevin shipping ; and thereafter 
Positano was heard of no more in the greater affairs of the 
Kingdom. 

The little town stands high over a great bay round which 
the road winds in and out and up and down. The head- 
land which closes this bay upon the east, Capo Sottile, is 
crowned by the village of Vettica Maggiore and its church 
of S. Gennaro, in which there is a picture of the Holy 
Family by some Neapolitan master. Beyond the head- 
land lies the beautiful village of Prajano amid vineyards 
and olive gardens, through which the road proceeds still 
high over the sea under the cliffs of Furore, a wild and 
romantic village set on the edge of a vast precipice „at the 
foot of which lies the tiny Marina. Furore stands in a wide 
rugged bay closed on the east by the curiously shaped 
Capo della Conca, upon which is piled up the village of 
Conca with its busy Marina beneath it, whence, it is said, 
its ships sail to all the ports of the Levant. And so the 
great adventurous road proceeds along this wild and 
beautiful coast under the villages of Tovere, Vettica 
Minore, Lone, and Pastena, down to the shore at last at 
Amalfi, which it enters through a great tunnel under the 
Cappuccini. 
Approached thus at evening, with the last light from the 



^ 




•- ■ «!»;. I I I i I » 

, I ! i I 



j-^C^l^^ j>. 



amat.fi 



AMALFI III 

west full upon it, Amalii seems to stand about an amphi- 
theatre of hills, its churches, towers, and white houses 
hanging on the face of the great cliff which towers up above 
it in an awful magnificence, the little white port under the 
eastern hill, and all before it the enormous and tremulous 
sea. 

And on the morrow you find that Amalfi delights you 
as much in detail as in that great impression in the twilight. 
The history of the place knows nothing of any Greek or 
Roman city, and indeed it seems to have had no existence 
in antiquity. The first we hear of it is in a letter of Gregory 
the Great's in the year 596, in which he alludes to its bishop. 
In truth, Amalfi seems to have been founded by — at any rate 
it first appears under the protection of — the Byzantine 
Empire. She was then governed by a Prefect chosen 
apparently by the people, and when by the growth of her 
population, the activity of her commerce, and the decay of 
the Imperial power in Italy, the city was able to proclaim 
herself a Republic, this Prefect is called the Doge. Amalfi 
is thus one of the first Italian cities to erect herself into a 
Republic, and indeed she can boast that she gave the signal 
for the awakening of the municipal spirit, the independence 
of the cities of Italy. She was able too to defy the Saracens, 
the Prince of Palermo, and even in some sort the Norman 
kings of Naples. In the ninth century her great enemy, 
indeed, would seem to have been Sicardo, the Lombard 
Prince of Benevento, who in 838 attacked her and carried 
off her chief treasure, as it was thought, the body of S. 
Trofimena. It was about this time too that the unbroken 
line of her bishops began, and in spite of occasional disaster 
her position grew to be so great that she was not only the 
fifth city in Italy, but her government extended on the 
west to the promontory of Sorrento, on the north to 
Gragnano, and on the east to Cetara, while in 987 Pope 
John XV raised her See to the rank of an Archbishopric. 
At this time Amalfi could boast of some 50,000 inhabitants, 
but the straitness of her territory, and especially its poverty. 



112 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

mere rock and mountain, forced her to depend altogether 
upon trade ; and though this made her wealthy, she was by 
no means secure. Indeed, though she was able always to 
face the Norman, in 1131 King Roger received her nominal 
submission. 

It happened thus : as long ago as 1075 the little Republic 
had been oppressed by Gisulfus of Salerno, and had gladly 
received the aid of Robert Guiscard against her enemy. 
Robert, however, annexed Amalfi as he did Salerno to his 
dominions ; but in 1096 the Republic regained her liberty. 
Then Roger, the son of Robert Guiscard, gathering all his 
forces, with 20,000 Saracens, laid siege to the place, and 
failed, owing to the opening of the First Crusade. In 
1 1 29, however, he turned again to Amalfi, and sent his 
Admiral against the Republic, which lost Ravello and all 
her castles. In 1131 the Amalfitani surrendered, though 
they guarded carefully their municipal institutions. 

The Crusades, of which the first had been so lucky for her, 
offered her her greatest opportunity, and she perhaps 
gained more than any other Italian city from these adven- 
tures. She sent expedition after expedition to the Holy 
Land, and it was a hospital founded by her sons in 
Jerusalem that was the origin of the Hospitallers of S. 
John of Jerusalem. In the eleventh century, indeed, Amalfi 
rivalled Pisa and Genoa, and it was in a quarrel, not her 
own, with the former of these cities that she lost the most 
famous of her treasures, the celebrated copy of the Pandects 
of Justinian. 

Lothair was in 11 35 at war with Roger of Sicily on behalf 
of Pope Innocent, and was supported by the Pisans. 
Roger summoned the Amalfitani with their fleet to attack 
Naples, and in the course of this attack forty-six Pisan 
ships sacked Amalfi, Scala, and Ravello ; and though the 
Norman forces succeeded in breaking them at last, after a 
hasty return over Monte S. Angelo, they got away, with 
their famous prize, which they held for three hundred years, 
until the Florentines took it from them and carried it 



AMALFI 113 

to their city, where it still remains. To this wonderful 
booty has been attributed the renaissance of Roman law 
not only in Italy but in all the West. 

The Pisans had returned from Amalfi discomfited, though 
with their famous booty ; they were not ready to put 
up with their defeat. Two years later they returned, and 
with so great a force that Amalfi made peace and payed 
tribute without a blow. Ravello, which refused such 
ignominy, was sacked and pillaged. From this time, 
indeed from the first surrender six years before to Roger 
of Sicily, Amalfi began to decline, and this was hastened 
not by any mortal foe, but by nature herself ; the unstable 
coast, always subject to earthquake, slowly began now 
to subside. All through the thirteenth and fourteenth 
centuries this seems to have continued, till more than half 
the city, all the marina, in fact, was drowned by the sea, 
and no trace of those once busy quays loaded with the 
merchandise of the Mediterranean now remains. 

The one incident of the thirteenth century which calls 
for any attention was the reception by the Amalfitani 
of the body of S. Andrew the Apostle, which they placed 
in their Cathedral. This they did not win in a fight ; it 
was brought from Constantinople by Pietro Cardinal of 
Capua, who presented it to his native city. 

The fourteenth century shows us at least one famous 
man born in the city, Flavio Gioja, who was the first 
European to make and use the mariner's compass, which 
he brought from the East, and in honour of Charles 11 of 
Anjou, then King of Naples, he placed, as may still be seen, 
the fleur-de-lis in place of the N. at the top of the dial. 

Little remains to be seen in Amalfi, which can be said 
to date from the famous days of the Republic. Perhaps 
the great round Tower on Monte Aureo is all that may 
claim that honour, though the convent of S. Trinita and 
the church of S. Maria Maggiore are said to stand upon 
the site of two of its public buildings— the mint and the 
theatre respectively. 
8 



114 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

The glory of Amalfi, in so far as it is to be found not 
in her history but in her monuments, is the great Cathedral 
of S. Andrew, where in the crypt lies the uncorrupt body 
of the Apostle brought from Constantinople in 1206. The 
glorious church, marred of course by time, by restoration 
and rebuildings, stands at the top of a great flight of steps, 
which lead up to its vestibule, upheld by the antique 
columns of Paestum. There in the fa9ade are those wonder- 
ful bronze doors which are said to date from the year 
1000, and from which those of Monte Cassino were copied. 
Upon them we read, however, in the silver inscription which 
adorns them, that they were erected here by Pantaleone di 
Mauro in honour of S. Andrew et pro anima sua ; but the 
body of S. Andrew was only brought to Amalfi in 1206. 

The church itself is, in spite of all it has suffered, still a 
beautiful Norman-Byzantine building, rather picturesque 
than artistic, the antique columns within, modernized 
and transformed into pillars in the eighteenth century. 
The two ancient ambones supported by antique columns 
remain, as does the font, an antique vase of porphyry. 
Close by are two antique sarcophagi, upon which are to 
be seen the Rape of Persephone and other pagan stories. 
From the too sophisticated nave you descend, in the south 
aisle, to the modernized and over-decorated cr57pt, where 
lies the body of S. Andrew the Apostle, a precious relic 
visited through the centuries by innumerable pilgrims, 
among others by S. Francis of Assisi in 1218, by Queen 
Giovanna, and by Pius 11, in whose time Cardinal Bessarion 
carried away the head of the Apostle in a silver reliquary 
to S. Peter's in Rome, where it still remains. Philip iii 
of Spain presented the church with the huge bronze 
statue of the saint, the work of Nacchearino. To the north 
of the church stands the interesting cloister. The beautiful 
Campanile of four stories, the last being round, under a 
cupola upheld by columns, and set about with four little 
turrets, was the work, of the Archbishop Filippo Augus- 
tariccio in 1276. 



RAVELLO 115 

The Cathedral, spoiled though it be and crippled too, 
for the nave has now but three aisles instead of four, is of 
course the greatest sight in Amalfi, though both S. Gradello 
and S. Lorenzo are worth perhaps a visit. The only other 
work of art in the place, however, that no one should miss 
is the old and, alas, desecrated convent of the Cappuccini, 
now an hotel, high up to the west of the city. The convent 
was founded in 1212 by the same Cardinal Capuano who 
presented the body of S. Andrew to Amalfi. Therein he 
placed the Cistercians of Fosanova, and later the Emperor 
Frederick 11 endowed the place. In the fifteenth century, 
however, the Cistercians abandoned it, and for more than 
a hundred years it fell into ruin, till in 1583 the people 
of Amalfi restored it and gave it to the Cappuccini. When 
they were suppressed in 1815 this convent became a 
hostelry, but in 1850 they rescued it again, only for a time, 
however, for with the advent of the Piedmontese the place 
became a naval college, and is now, as we see, once more 
a hostelry, and a very charming one to boot. The only 
monumental interest the place has for us to-day is to be 
found in the double cloisters, a striking example of thir- 
teenth-century work, very much influenced, one may 
suppose, by the work in the cloister of the Cathedral. 

A far more splendid church than any in Amalfi is to be 
seen at Ravello, some four miles up the Dragone Valley 
to the north-east upon the hills. It seems that the 
RepubUc of Amalfi in its great days was somewhat t57ranni- 
cal in its domestic government, and especially with regard 
to the old noble families, which were numerous, and always 
awaiting an opportunity to make themselves masters. 
The Government at length turned them out, and they 
fortified themselves upon this hill-top at Ravello, which 
presently saw a city of some 36,000 inhabitants, walled 
and very strong, established here. When the Amalfitani 
fought with Robert Guiscard the nobles of Ravello took 
his part, and when at last he was victorious he besought 
Pope Victor iii to make Ravello into a Bishopric without 



ii6 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Amalfi, and this the 
Pope did, making Ravello subject only to the Holy See. 

The greatest among the noble famihes that had estab- 
lished Ravello had been that of Rufolo, and in 1087 at 
the head of it stood that Niccolo Rufolo who was Duke of 
Dora and Grand Admiral to Roger of Sicily ; to him and 
his descendants all that is loveliest in Ravello to-day is 
due. Niccolo himself, it is said in 1087, founded the great 
Cathedral on the hill-top, which was restored in the 
eighteenth century, but remains, nevertheless, one of the 
noblest churches in this part of Italy. A fine Norman 
Byzantine building, it still preserves its two great central 
doors of bronze, though it has lost those on either side. 
These famous doors, with their fifty-four relief s,were given to 
thechurchby Sergio Muscetola andhiswife in 1179. They are, 
I think, without equal in the Italian peninsula ; the beauty 
and delicacy of their work, its extraordinary distinction 
and style, mark them out as the master- works of their kind 
in the twelfth century ; indeed, they can only be compared 
with the doors of the Cathedrals of Trani and Monreale. 

Nor is this all. Within the church are marvellous 
ambones encrusted with mosaics. That from which the 
Gospel was said is supported by six spiral columns set 
upon the backs of lions, and before it is a small pillar bear- 
ing an eagle for the book of the Gospels, and there is written 
In principio erat Verbum. It is reached by a staircase of 
marble encrusted with mosaics. This ambone was erected, 
as the inscription records, by Niccolo Rufolo, a descendant 
of the Admiral of King Roger, and was made by Niccolo 
di Bartolommeo da Foggia in 1272. 

Opposite this glorious work is the earlier and finer Epistle 
ambone with its beautiful Byzantine mosaics of Jonah 
and the monster. It dates from 1130. Other mosaics 
are to be found now about the Bishop's throne ; they 
once formed part of the high altar. 

Nothing to be seen anywhere else in Campania can com- 
pare in beauty and splendour and delight with these truly 



RAVELLO 117 

marvellous works, the glorious doors and pulpits of the 
Cathedral of Ravello. With them in our hearts, the work 
of later masters seems to have suddenly become common 
and obvious, and without any right understanding of 
decoration or beauty. To these great Byzantine works 
even Giotto might go to school. 

Scarcely less interesting or delightful in its own way is the 
beautiful Palazzo Rufolo close by, with its curious twelfth- 
century court, its gardens and terraces, from which the view 
is so lordly that even Niccolo Rufolo must have been satisfied 
with it. Here our English Pope, Hadrian iv of S. Albans, 
dwelt when in 1156 he came to Ravello and sang Mass in 
the Cathedral before the six hundred nobles of the place, 
thirty-six of which were Knights of S. John of Jerusalem. 

Three other churches in Ravello, which is now a mere 
village, are worth seeing : S. Giovanni for the sake of its 
fine ambone, upheld by four columns and encrusted with 
mosaics similar to those in the Duomo ; the Annunziata 
for the sake of its curious early frescoes; and S. Chiara 
for its view down the valley of the Dragon. Nor should 
you return to Amalfi until you have followed the road by 
which you have come a mile and a half beyond Ravello 
to Scala, which of old was walled with a wall of a hundred 
towers and boasted more than a hundred churches, before 
it was overthrown by the Pisans in the twelfth century, 
as I have said. The Cathedral here, for Scala too had 
a Bishop independent of the Archbishop of Amalfi, has 
another beautiful ambone, though not half so fine as those 
at Ravello, and in the sacristy is a beautiful mitre of the 
thirteenth century, presented to Scala by the great Charles 
of Anjou in recompense and gratitude for the services of 
the citizens during S. Louis's expedition against the Moors. 
Indeed, these hills are very rich in beautiful things, and the 
traveller who visits S. Pietro a Castagna on the way back 
to Amalfi, and Pontone, where Masaniello is said to have 
been bom, or climbs up to S. Maria de* Monti, will not have 
spent his time in vain. 



ii8 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

The coast road from Amalfi to Vietri, though by no 
means so fine as that from Sorrento to Amalfi, is, neverthe- 
less, a very glorious thing. Here the little towns lie nearer 
the sea, as does the road itself, and the country lacks the 
boldness of the more western part of the coast. 

The first of these little towns is Atrani, upon the eastern 
side of the Capo di Amalfi, and close to the sea. It was of 
old a confederate city, strongly walled, with Amalfi, and 
it perished in the same misfortune. The great church of 
S. Salvatore in the Piazza has very fine bronze doors, 
Byzantine work of the eleventh century, though not so fine 
as those of Ravello. Here the Doges were elected, and here 
they were for the most part buried. Within are still some 
beautiful sepulchral stones. 

Still within the ancient territory of Amalfi you come 
to a delicious little place called Minori, with some remains 
of its old fortifications, especially a picturesque tower upon 
the headland. The church, too, possesses a fine pulpit 
similar to that at Scala. 

Farther, but still a part of the old Republic, all about 
the mouth of the Val Tramonti stands the very eastern- 
looking town of Majori, with its fine old walls and towers 
still mor€ or less intact, and above on the hills ruins of 
Castello di S. Niccolo, of S. Maria dell' Avvocata, a Camaldo- 
lese monastery founded in the fifteenth century, and of the 
old Badia, where are still some curious frescoes. 

The coast beyond Majori becomes bolder and wilder, 
the finest part of the road lying between Majori and Vietri, 
where the chief place is Cetara, that nest of the Saracens, 
which marked the eastern confines of the Republic of 
Amalfi. After rounding the Capo d'Orso, the city of 
Salerno shines before you upon the opposite coast of the 
great Gulf ; but I think the wise traveller will refuse her 
invitation, and at Vietri, the ancient Marcina, will take the 
road away from the sea up the valley northward to Cava, 
a clean and deUghtful place with more than one comfortable 
hostelry, such as Salerno cannot boast. 



VII 

LA CAVA AND SALERNO 

LA CAVA DEI TIRRENI is a picturesque little place, 
consisting for the most part of one long arcaded street 
and a few piazzas, in which stand some rather gaunt 
churches. The town is set in a vast amphitheatre of broken 
hills 600 feet above the sea, over a delicious and fruitful 
valley, and it gets its name of Cava from the famous 
monastery of SS. Trinita della Cava. This great Cluniac 
house lies more than an hour away from the town to the 
south-west, and in another valley, being shut off from Cava 
by a formidable barrier of hills. The great abbey was 
founded by Alferio Pappacarbone, of a noble Longobard 
family of Salerno, in 992. He, it seems, fell ill at Cluny, and 
there made a vow that if he got well he would become a 
monk and would build an abbey in honour of the Blessed 
Trinity and for the glory of the great Order of Cluny, not 
then a hundred years old. Returning to Salerno he fulfilled 
his vow, and founded in this place the abbey we see, the 
older part of which was finished in 1025. Alferio became 
the first Prior, but did not live to see the consecration of 
his church by Pope Urban 11 in the presence of Roger of 
Sicily, the very church which was so brutally rebuilt in 
1796. There, however, he was buried, as was Sibilla, the 
sister of the Duke of Burgundy, the second wife of King 
Roger ; their sarcophagi may still be seen. Here, too, is a 
fine ambone and paschal candlestick, noble Cosmati works 
from the old building. 

The most interesting part of the monastery to-day, 

119 



120 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

however, is not the church, but the older parts of the house 
itself, and the curious cloisters under the great cliff with 
their pointed vaults and round arches borne by many an 
antique column. The older part of the house is, as one 
sees, built under the rock, and is really a part of the great 
natural cavern which names the place. 

The great treasure of La Cava, that to which it owes all 
its fame, is its vast archives, which contain some 40,000 
parchments, among them more than 1600 Diplomas and 
Bulls, and over 60,000 other documents. Many of these 
concern the primitive and mediaeval history of Italy, and 
La Cava is at least as rich as Montecassino in historical 
documents of the first importance from 793 to 1400. In 
the library, too, is a fine collection of illuminated Bibles 
and Horae, one of which is said to be the work of Fra 
Angelico. 

Attractive as La Cava is with this great religious house 
and its treasures in the background, it will not keep the 
traveller long from Salerno, which can be reached from 
thence in about half an hour by an electric tramway. 

Salerno to-day is a squalid but picturesque town, beauti- 
fully situated within the northern curve of the ancient 
gulf of Poseidonia, now called by its name, the Gulf of 
Salerno. Little remains of the old splendour of the place, 
but it is worth some trouble to see on account of its 
Cathedral, and perhaps most of all for the sake of its ancient 
renown. For in truth it is a very ancient place, beside 
which La Cava and Amalfi and Ravello are but newcomers. 
We know nothing of its origin, but in 194 B.C. a Roman 
colony was established in what Livy calls Castrum Salemi, 
so that evidently before that date there was a fortress 
here. Indeed, the Roman colony was, as Strabo tells us, 
established there for the express purpose of holding the 
Picentines in check, for they had eagerly espoused the cause 
of Hannibal. They had, it seems, a town in this neighbour- 
hood called Picentia ; its ruins may still be seen or at least 
its site inspected at Pontecagnano in the plain to the south 



SALERNO 121 

of Salerno.^ This was destroyed, and Salerno became the 
chief place upon the north of the Gulf, though even so it 
was not of any great importance. Indeed, its name appears 
but once in history, and that in the Social War when it was 
taken by the Samnite General, Caius Papius. Later, 
Horace speaks of it in writing to his friend, Numonius Vala, 
and asks about its climate — 

Quae sit hiemps Veliae, quod caelum, Vala, Salerni . . . 

It was not indeed until long after the failure of the 
Roman administration in the time of the Lombard conquest 
that Salerno became the most important and flourishing 
city upon this coast, and one of the greatest and richest 
cities in Campania. This city of the Lombards, like its 
Roman predecessor, stood not as the modem town does, 
for the most part in the marshy plain along the shore, but 
upon the hill at the back of the city, and doubtless its 
nucleus was the Cathedral. It was here that the Lombards 
established themselves, and here that upon the dissolution 
of the Lombardy Duchy of Benevento Salerno became an 
independent principality. The Duchy of Benevento in 
the ninth century, it will be remembered, split up first 
into two parts, an eastern and a western, the western under 
the name of the Principality of Salerno. But soon after 
this the Count of Capua threw off his allegiance to the 
Prince of Salerno, so that the old Duchy of Benevento was 
presently represented by three independent states. In 
the awful revolutions of the succeeding two hundred years, 
when I suppose Europe more nearly foundered than ever 
before or since, Salerno played a very considerable part. 
It was then that the Saracens issued from the port of 
Palermo to raid these Christian coasts, their assistance as 
often as not invited by the rivals now facing each other 
in the old Lombard Duchy. A colony of Saracens had 
been planted at Bari. Their universal depredations united 

1 The village of Vicenza still remains there. Its railway station 
is S. Antonio a Vicenza. 



122 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

east and west against them, and Bari was taken, but the 
alHes soon quarrelled, the Carlovingian house decayed, and 
the Greeks claimed the fruits of the common victory. 
Everything south of a line drawn from Monte Gargano to 
Salerno, that is to say, all Calabria and Apulia, remained 
under their dominion, and the Lombard princes of Bene- 
vento, Salerno, and Capua were thus torn from the allegiance 
of the Latin world, but the Greeks could only hold their 
own against the Ottos by the help of the Saracen, and in 
the struggle we find Salerno besieged by these Asiatics in 
874, when a Mohammedan Chief spread his couch on the 
high altar of the Cathedral, and there sacrified each night 
the virginity of a Christian nun. But we read, " As he 
wrestled with a reluctant maid a beam in the roof was 
accidently or dexterously thrown down on his head ; and 
the death of the lustful emir was imputed to the wrath of 
Christ, which was at length awakened to the defence of his 
faithful spouse." 

Thus the broken provinces of the Greeks, the Lombards 
and the Saracens submitted to an unspeakable anarchy 
in which, as I say, Europe and even her Faith was in 
obvious danger. Little by little the future declared 
itself. In 1016 it seems a Saracen fleet was besieging 
Salerno, when forty knights from Normandy arrived in 
the city, having disembarked in the neighbourhood on 
their return from the Holy Land. Hearing that the city 
was hard pressed, they offered their services, and having 
saved the town, and beaten off the pirates, they returned 
to Normandy laden with rich presents, promising in 
return to persuade their countrymen to come down into 
the South, and to help to redeem Italy from the infidel. 
They came, as we know, and before the year was out 
they rode, a great company of them, right into Apulia, 
and before many years had passed, partly by valour and 
partly by sagacity, made themselves masters. In 1029 
Aversa was their nest, whence they set out to possess 
Sicily and Southern Italy. They placed themselves and 



SALERNO 123 

their territory at first under the suzerainty of the Prince 
of Salerno (1042), but the genius of Robert Guiscard wrung 
from the Papacy a new honour and a new title in 1060, 
and after a siege of eight months, from May to December, 
the city of Salerno came into his hands in 1076, and the 
new Kingdom, that which our fathers knew as the King- 
dom of the Two Sicilies, was complete, the parliament of 
Barons which declared him King being held within the 
walls of Salerno in 1130. When Guiscard possessed 
himself of Amalfi, his state of course reaped the riches 
of her trade ; by the acquisition of Salerno he obtained 
a perhaps not less valuable booty. The treasures of 
Greek medicine had there found a refuge in the years of the 
anarchy. They owed nothing whatever to the barbarous 
Saracens, as has been maintained by many historians. 
Medicine was a Greek Science, and it probably found a 
refuge in Salerno, because of the survival of the Greek 
language in this region, of which that city was the metro- 
polis. Salerno, indeed, went back to Hippocrates without 
the insolent assistance of the Arab ; its learning was as 
famous as the beauty of its women : 

Urbs Latii non est hac delitiosior urbe, 
Frugibus arboribus vinoque redundat ; et unde 
Non tibi poma, nuces, non pulchra palatia desunt, 
Non species muliebris abest probitasque virorum. . . . 

And Ordericus Vitalis tells us that the medical school of 
Salerno existed ah antiquo tempore. Certainly, in the 
tenth century, the place was famous for its physicians, 
and we possess works of the medical writers of Salerno, 
dating from the early part of the eleventh. This school, 
then, the Norman conquerors, and not least Robert 
Guiscard, protected, though it was Frederick 11 who 
first gave it by his edict of 1231 the power of examining 
candidates for the royal licence, which he made com- 
pulsory for the practice of medicine. It was a school 
of medicine, not a university. Mr. Rashdall tells us: 



124 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

" Salerno remains a completely isolated factor in the 
academic polity of the Middle Ages. While its position 
as a School of Medicine was for two centuries at least as 
unique as that of Paris in Theology, and that of Bologna 
in Law, while throughout the Middle Ages no School of 
Medicine, except Montpelier, rivalled its fame, it remained 
without influence on the development of academic insti- 
tutions." 

If Frederick ii conferred a great benefit upon the school 
of Salerno, he did no more than was due to her from 
one of his house, for his father, when he claimed the crown 
of the Two Sicilies, by virtue of his marriage with Con- 
stance, daughter of King Roger, razed the city to the 
ground in 1198. It was rebuilt, but it never again played 
any great part in history, its claim to honour during the 
Middle Age being entirely due to its great School of 
Medicine, which alone could grant, as I have said, the right 
to practise the art within the Kingdom. 

To-day the old city of Salerno has but one thing to 
boast of, its Cathedral. The modern town, the great 
promenade of the Marina, now called Corso Garibaldi, is 
more than a mile long, and fine as it is lacks interest. 
The harbour which Manfred enlarged in 1260, and which 
was finished by Robert the Wise, has been improved out 
of all recognition, and the great Castello which Robert 
Guiscard stormed, some 900 feet up over the sea, is a 
mere vast heap of ruins. The old town under this enor- 
mous debris is, however, picturesque and dirty enough to 
delight anyone, its irregular, narrow, and steep streets, 
often mere staircases, being full of mediaeval corners, 
old shrines, and old memories. It is here in the midst, 
with its great and beautiful atrium before it, is set the 
Cathedral, at the top of a great flight of steps. 

This great and glorious church was founded and built 
by Robert Guiscard in 1084 in honour of S. Matthew, 
whose body Salerno had possessed since 930, when it is 
said to have been brought hither from Paestum, and which 



SALERNO 125 

Robert placed in the crypt, where it remains to this day. 
The Norman, whose works always astonish us, had seen 
and adored the ruins of Paestum, and these too he plun- 
dered for the glory of the new church. The great atrium 
before the Cathedral is entirely surrounded by antique 
columns brought from Poseidonia, but either from pity 
or from ignorance the building that was plundered to 
provide them was not one of those majestic temples we 
owe to- the Greek genius, but a mere Roman work. Here 
are its columns and sarcophagi, the latter converted into 
Christian tombs. 

The church itself is guarded by marvellous doors of 
bronze, presented by Landolfo Butromile, and made in 
Constantinople in 1099. They are wonderfully adorned 
with the figures of six apostles and with crosses, and were 
once all inlaid with silver. Within, unhappily, the church 
we see is altogether unworthy of these glories, for it has 
been entirely modernized. It still retains, however, certain 
noble ornaments from of old and its tombs. 

Over the great doors within is a fine mosaic of S. Matthew, 
a Byzantine work of the eleventh century. At the end 
of the nave are two beautiful Byzantine ambones, with a 
noble paschal candlestick, similar to those at Ravello, 
though not so fine, dating from the twelfth century. In 
the choir is a pavement, a balustrade, and a Bishop's 
throne of similar work, and here are two columns of verde 
antico from Paestum, now bearing lights. 

At the end of the left aisle is the very lovely Gothic 
tomb of Margaret of Anjou, who died in 1412, the wife 
of Charles of Durazzo, and the mother of King Ladislaus 
and of Giovanna 11, the work of Baboccio da Pipemo. 
She Hes under a canopy supported by angels, while a relief 
upon a sarcophagus shows her enthroned among her 
children. Above all, the tomb is interesting for its poly- 
chrome decoration, which is almost entirely preserved. 
Close by is the tomb of a Bishop of Salerno, Niccolo 
PisciceUi, by Jacopo della Pila, another work of the 



126 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

fifteenth century. The chapel at the end of this aisle 
to the left of the high altar contains a Pieta by Andrea da 
Salerno. In the similar chapel to the right of the high 
altar lies the greatest of all the Popes, Hildebrand Pope 
Gregory vii. This was he who in the eleventh century 
conceived that wonderful dream which only the brutality 
of the time prevented him from realizing to our lasting 
good. He it was who would have summoned an army 
from all Christendom, which he would have led in person 
to the conquest of Byzantium, that the Greek and Latin 
Churches might have been united under one head ; and 
this having been achieved, all Christendom under his 
leadership would have turned upon the Saracen and 
restored the Empire of Augustus and of Hadrian and of 
Constantine. In that dream lay all the future of which 
even now, now least of all, should we despair. The Pope 
forewent his dream. Instead, seeing the corruption of 
the world he began the reformation of the West. And 
first he made an army that nothing has ever been able to 
break, for he made it in a white fire and of steel. He 
established the celibacy of the clergy, created the priest- 
hood of Europe, and forbade alike the investiture of a 
married clergyman or any layman to any spiritual ofiice. 
Then he claimed for the Church an absolute independence 
from the temporal power of Caesar ; more, he declared and 
maintained the supremacy of the Church over the State, 
and all this he made good ; and over all shone the throne 
of Peter like the sun over the world. For he claimed and 
maintained and established the infallibility of the Pope ; 
he asserted and erected the name of Pope as incomparable 
with any other ; the Pope alone could make and depose 
an Emperor ; all Princes must kiss his feet ; he could 
release from their allegiance the subjects of those whom 
he had excommunicated, and his legates took precedence 
over all Bishops and all ambassadors. 

The first to face him and say him nay was the Emperor ; 
at Canossa he was broken and humbled in the snow. 



SALERNO 127 

It was Hildebrand alone who flung his Europe upon the 
Holy Sepulchre. But when he died in Salerno, having 
given a general absolution to mankind, but excepting from 
this act of mercy Henry, so-called the King, and the usurp- 
ing pontiff Gilbert and their abettors, his last words were : 
" I have loved justice and hated iniquity ; therefore I die 
in exile." He had not lived in vain, since there was one 
to answer : "In exile thou canst not die ! Vicar of 
Christ and His Apostles thou hast received the nations 
for thine inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth 
for thy possession." 

This man, who more than any other before or since has 
expressed and summed up the soul of the Church and of 
Europe, was the son of a poor carpenter ; but his name 
is like a light in heaven ; when it was extinguished, the 
kings crept out into their twilight. Here in Salerno let 
us salute him. 



VIII 

EBOLI AND P^STUM 

THE great spectacle which La Cava or Salerno usually 
affords the traveller, which for the most part is the 
reason for a visit to them, is the Greek Temples of Psestum, 
twenty-four miles to the south of Salerno in the malarious 
marsh by the low seashore that stretches from Monte Giove 
on the north to Agropoli on the south. The traveller usually 
leaves La Cava or Salerno in the morning, spends the best 
part of the day at Psestum, and returns in time for dinner ; 
and this procedure, unsatisfactory as it is, for it not only 
forces one to see those marvellous sanctuaries in the com- 
pany of a crowd of tourists and in the ugliest hours of the 
day, but entails a journey of not much less than two hours 
each way, is generally considered necessary, on account 
of the unhealthy and malarious situation of Paestum itself, 
which for this reason is without an inn, or indeed any 
decent habitation. Psestum, however, is worth any sort of 
trouble to see quietly, apart from the crowd, and best of 
all in the early morning, and therefore I determined not 
to follow the usual plan, but to go to Eboli overnight, 
and to drive thence at dawn some fifteen miles across the 
oak forest of Persano down the valley of the Sele to Psestum 
shining in the rising sun.^ Nor was I disappointed. Eboli 

1 The traveller who wishes to see the Temples alone need not go 

to the expense of this long drive. He can easily go into Battipaglia 

from Eboli, some four miles, in time to catch the early morning 

train for Paestum, which leaves Battipaglia at 6.17 a.m., arriving at 

Paestum before 7 o'clock, 

(28 



EBOLI AND P^STUM 129 

itself, the ancient Eburum, on the hills to the north-east 
of the great Pianura di Pesto, I found to be full of interest. 
This almost unvisited little town boasts a quite possible 
hostelry in the Albergo Pastore, and from the grand old 
Castello offers the traveller glorious views of the great 
mountains and over the forest and the plain to the far-away 
temples and the sea. Nor is it itself without treasures. 
In the church of S. Francesco, in the sacristy, there is to be 
seen a large picture of the Madonna and Child, an altar- 
piece by Andrea da Salerno, to say nothing of a Cruci- 
fixion by Roberto Oderisi, the fourteenth-century pupil 
it might seem of Simone Napoletano. 

The road from Eboli to Passtum, very early in the 
morning, is full of delight. The forest of Persano was 
of old of much greater extent and beauty than it is to-day ; 
but in 1746 all the Bosco Grande was destroyed by fire : 
what remains is a vast ruin of the great forest of the Silarus 
of which Virgil speaks : — 

Est lucos Silari circa ilicibusque virentem 
Plurimiis Alburnum volitans cui nunen asilo 
Romanum est, oestrum Graii vertere vocantes 
Asper, acerba sonans quo tota exterrita silvis 
Diffugiunt armenta . . ." ^ 

I don't know of any more graphic description of the 
mosquito, which of course still abounds in all this country : 
in Virgil's lines one can almost hear the small sharp drone 
of the dangerous little beast. 

Coming out of the forest, the road from Eboli joins the 
high road southward from Battipaglia across the half- 
drained marsh where of old great herds of buffalo used to 

^ " About the groves of Silarus and Albumus, where holm-oaks 
flourish, an insect flies often : we Romans call it asilus, the Greeks 
gave it another name, oestros ; a stinging fly buzzing with sharp 
sound, thereat terrified all the herds scatter in flight through the 
woods ..." Strabo also speaks of the unheg^lthiness qi the plain 
of Paestum. 



130 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

wander, a few of which still remain. These beasts are not 
native to Italy, or indeed to Europe. They were brought 
by the Saracens into Sicily, and thence into the peninsula 
by the Normans. In the year 1300 Filippo di Taranto 
gave all the marsh on the right bank of the Silarus, or Sele 
as it is now caUed, to the people of Eboli as pasturage for 
their buffalo, and the marsh to the east of the river to the 
people of Capaccio for the same purpose. The marsh-land 
suited the brutes very well, and one may measure the 
success of the drainage of the plain by the extent to which 
the oxen have replaced the wilder and inferior beast. 

The country here is still brutalized by the marsh, almost 
unpopulated, and extraordinarily melancholy. It is with 
relief that soon after crossing the Sele one sees still far off 
the ruins of Paestum, and with delight one presently passes 
a lonely farm at the gates of the forgotten city, where as by 
a miracle roses are blooming, the twice blossoming roses 
perhaps of which Virgil sings, or were they the eglantine ? — 

. . . biferi rosaria Psesti. 

But not the wild desolation of the plain, nor its silence, 
nor its shadowy light, prepare one in any way at all for that 
vision of splendour and sadness which it still guards so 
well. One enters the gate of the desolate city, and there 
within the low overgrown far-stretched walls of the place, 
in the immense silence of early morning, in the clear and 
tender light beside the sea, three temples stand that in 
their mysterious isolation and tragic beauty are like 
something wholly divine, at one with the sky and the earth 
and the sea, from which indeed they come, out of which 
they were hewn, and in honour of which they still stand, 
abandoned by man, after centuries of silence, in so great 
majesty. 

Within a great walled pentagon, near three miles in 
circumference, they are alone with the sun, the wind, and 
the sea. What can the city have been like which boasted 
such sanctuaries as these ? It cannot have been less, 



P.ESTUM 131 

one might think, than the capital of Magna Graecia, beside 
which Cuma was a provincial town and Neapolis a village. 
Indeed, Poseidonia was but a colony, the colony of Sybaris. 

Its foundation dates from about 650 B.C. The Dorians 
of Troezen, who had been associated with the Achaeans 
in the foundation of Sybaris upon the shores of the Ionian 
Sea, in what we now call the Gulf of Taranto, were it seems 
so numerous that in course of time their descendants 
formed ^o great a party within the city as to threaten its 
character, therefore the Sybarites turned them out while 
they could, and established them in a new colony here at 
the mouth of the Silarus, upon the Tyrrhene Sea. Thus 
Sybaris early established her power upon the two coasts, 
and since the God of the Dorians of Troezen was above all 
Poseidon, they named the new city after him, placing it 
under his protection, and called it Poseidonia ; and until 
the ruin of Sybaris at the hands of Cotrone, in 510 B.C., 
Poseidonia looked to her as a daughter to a mother, as a 
provincial city to the metropolis, paying an annual tribute 
and contributing soldiers for her armies in case of need, as 
did indeed twenty-five other free cities. Thus Sybaris 
estabhshed her power upon the Tyrrhene Sea, and to such 
purpose that when the Phocaeans came to build the city of 
Velia, the only city save Cuma, the oldest of all, founded 
upon this coast not as a colony but as a new settlement, 
she with Poseidonia looked upon it as a usurpation of her 
territory, and instantly made war, which Poseidonia con- 
tinued even after the ruin of Sybaris, though without the old 
success. 

Indeed, under the hegemony of Sybaris, Poseidonia 
flourished exceedingly : she firmly established herself as 
the great city of the Gulf we call of Salerno, but which 
in the sixth century B.C. took its name from her, and which 
even the Romans continued to call Pcestanus Sinus. 

Sybaris ceased to exist, however, in 510 B.C., and it has 
been suggested that the bulk of its population migrated to 
Poseidonia. History, such history as we have, however, 



132 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

by no means endorses such a theory. Indeed, we know so 
little of Poseidonia at any time, and especially after the 
destruction of Sybaris, that but for her marvellous ruins 
and the large number of her coins that have been found, 
we should scarcely be sure of her continued existence. 
It seems certain, however, that she was one of the first 
cities to suffer from the advance of the Lucanians, and she 
probably fell altogether into the hands of these barbarians 
before 390 B.C. At this time the Greeks do not seem 
to have been expelled, but they were compelled to receive 
a barbarian colony within the city and to submit to its 
authority. For ages, it is said, the Greeks of Poseidonia 
would assemble every year upon a certain festival, and 
bewaihng their captivity remember the great days of their 
fathers. But there seems little doubt that some two 
generations after the fall of the city it was retaken from the 
barbarians by Alexander, King of Epirus, in 330 B.C., and 
it is probable that it was he who built the walls we still see. 
They would appear to have availed the city very little, 
and when Alexander was gone Poseidonia again fell into 
the hands of the barbarians, and with the rest of Lucania 
came at last into the power of Rome. 

It would appear to have been at this time that the 
great city changed her name and became Paistum. This 
name, we may think, was not the oldest of all, for the 
(Enotrians before the Greeks came to the land had here 
perhaps a village, perhaps a town, which they called Viistos 
or Fiistos, and this became for the Lucanians Paistum, and 
for the Romans Paestum. 

The Romans estabHshed a colony in the city in 273 B.C., 
immediately after the departure of P3n:rhus from Italy ; 
but we hear as little of Roman Paestum as we do of Greek 
Poseidonia. All we know for certain is that it distinguished 
itself above every other Greek city by its fidelity to Rome 
during the Second Punic War, and this probably because it 
was no longer Greek. In the first years of the Empire 
certainly it was already unhealthy by reason of the silting 



PiESTUM 133 

up of the mouth of the small river upon which it stood ; 
it presently boasted a bishop, and certainly continued 
to exist down to the ninth century, when the site seems 
to have been abandoned, the inhabitants moving to 
Capaccio, a few miles inland upon the hills, on account 
of the raids of the Saracens, who had established them- 
selves at AgropoH. It is probable that the See was re- 
moved to Capaccio at the same time, but the bishop 
continued to bear the title of PcBstano until the end of 
the eleventh century, although Paestum had long before 
then become a desert. 

It would certainly seem that that emigration was really 
a flight, for the Paestani abandoned even their most 
precious possession, the body of S. Matthew in their 
cathedral church. In the year 954 the people of Salerno 
found it and stole it away, but they lost it. When by a 
miracle it was recovered, Robert Guiscard, as I have said, 
caused to be built as its shrine and in its honour the 
noble church in Salerno whose spoiled beauty we see to 
this day. In that work he employed the loot of the 
forgotten city, but whether from ignorance or super- 
stition, certainly by good fortune, he carried away the 
marble and the stones of a mere Roman building, leaving 
the Greek temples almost intact in an inviolable silence 
that endured for more than six hundred years. Indeed, 
it is surely one of the most extraordinary facts in the 
history of archaeology that these enormous and majestic 
ruins, though less than twenty- five miles from Salerno and 
less than four from Capaccio, an episcopal city, remained 
entirely unknown to the Middle Age and the Renaissance, 
nay, until the middle of the eighteenth century, when 
about 1740 they were discovered by a certain Conte 
Gazola, to be first accurately described by Swinburne 
in 1779, and first mapped by Wilkins in 1807 ; and yet the 
largest temple of the three is the best preserved Doric 
building in existence, and in its beauty and majesty 
rivals the Parthenon itself. 



134 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

The three temples stand within the ruined walls in a 
rough and stony place strewn with the debris of other 
buildings, and overgrown with brambles and wild flowers, 
and among them perhaps the twice-blossoming roses for 
which the place was famous. The two principal temples 
stand close together to the south, their fagades facing the 
agora, or market-place, the consecrated open space which 
in coast towns usually lay on the sea side of the city. 

The greater of the two temples, the Temple of Poseidon, 
is also the most ancient. Before it stands a platform in 
the midst of which we still see the foundations of the 
altar of sacrifice, for such bloody rites were not performed 
within the sanctuary but in the open air. The great 
building stands 58 metres long by 26 broad. The fagades 
east and west consist of six mighty columns which uphold 
the architrave, and there are twelve upon each of the 
sides north and south, in all thirty-six columns, 5 metres 
90 high and 2 metres 27 in diameter. The cella, or sanctuary, 
within is open to the sky, and consists of sixteen columns 
about 2 metres in diameter, surmounted by a second 
order of smaller columns, which bore the roof of the aisles. 
All these columns are intact save upon one side, where 
the smaller columns of the upper story have disappeared ; 
but the walls of the cella have been demolished. Although 
this mighty work, so nearly perfect, impresses one at once 
by its noble size and the beauty of its proportions, it 
seems less splendid than it is, because it is not built of 
marble but of stone. Of old, indeed, these enormous 
fluted columns of the Doric order, the shafts without a 
base resting immediately upon the stylobate, and diminish- 
ing in diameter from about one- quarter of their height to 
the top, were covered with a fine stucco which gave 
them the appearance of the finest marble, but this has 
nearly everjrwhere perished, and with it the beautiful 
polychrome ornamentation with which it was once 
enriched. But the absence of such ornamentation only 
enhances the impression of weight and power which 




P4 

G 
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Q 



P.ESTUM 135 

everyone receives from these indestructible sanctuaries. 
No wonder Roger of Normandy used the Roman buildings 
here for his quarries ; before these enormous and heroic 
stones he was helpless, he could neither move them nor 
use them in the buildings he was busy upon, which they 
would have dwarfed and made ridiculous. In their beauty 
and their strength they remain forever as though the sea and 
the earth had raised them in their own honour, as though 
indeed they were the work of nature rather than of man. 

And it is in truth in honour of the sea, of Poseidon, God 
of the Sea, that this the greatest of the three temples 
still stands there upon that lonely and desolate coast. 
In the name of that God to whom the city was dedicated, 
the men of Poseidonia raised it to Poseidon in the first 
half of the sixth century before Christ. It is therefore 
not only perhaps the most beautiful, but certainly one 
of the most ancient Doric buildings left to us in the world. 

The second temple, which stands beside it to the south, 
is a later work. Not only are its dimensions somewhat 
smaller, it measures 54 metres 33 in length and 24 metres 
50 in breadth, but its columns are both smaller and more 
numerous, and its form is altogether different. Upon 
either side north and south it numbers sixteen columns, 
and upon each of its fagades east and west there are nine 
columns, an uneven number, so that a column stands right 
in the midst of the entry. 

The whole temple would seem to have been built really 
as an experiment which was never repeated. Its peculiar 
form gives us its secret. It has been called a Basilica, 
but its double form of two parallel naves divided by the 
uneven number of the columns of its two fa9ades suggests 
at once that it was dedicated to a dual divinity, and we 
know of only one such in all the mythology of the Greeks, 
the mother and daughter Demeter and Persephone. This 
both the discoveries of statuettes in terra-cotta made 
in 1820 beside this temple and the coins of Poseidonia 
confirm, while we know that the Dorians of Troezen 



136 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

associated the two Goddesses of the Earth with the God of 
the Sea, and held them in scarcely less honour. 

The third temple, which stands at a considerable dis- 
tance to the north of its fellows, is much the smallest of the 
three, and would seem to offer an insoluble problem to the 
archaeologist who would discover in whose honour it was 
built. It can only be called the small temple. It measures 
32 metres 25 in length by 14 metres 25 in width. It 
consists of thirty-two columns, of which six appear in 
each of its fa9ades east and west, and while its beauty 
is very great it is of a less primitive kind than that of 
the two greater works. They date respectively from the 
early sixth and early fifth centuries B.C. ; this last temple 
cannot be much earlier than the end of the latter century, 
or perhaps the beginning of the fourth century, when 
Poseidonia had become Paistum and was, under the 
Lucanians, already a city half barbarian, where neverthe- 
less, as this temple shows, Greek manners and Greek art 
still prevailed and were able to find noble expression. 

Between this last temple and the Temple of Poseidon 
are the ruins of other buildings which would seem to date 
only from Roman times, and to be the stones of a theatre, 
of an amphitheatre, and of the platform of a very small 
temple. These were the buildings looted by Roger of 
Sicily for his Cathedral of S. Matthew at Salerno. 

But these may well be disregarded, and such tirne as 
can be spared from the temples themselves spent in an 
examination of the walls, huge masses of travertine in 
places over 12 feet high, dating from the time of Alexander 
of Epirus, and especially upon the eastern gate, the only 
one of the four which remains almost perfect and nearly 
50 feet high. 

When all is said, however, the delight of Paestum lies 
in its appeal to the eye, in the sheer beauty of those golden 
buildings shining there in the dawn between the great moun- 
tains and the sea in the midst of the wide plain, deserted 
and silent, where only the sun and the wind are at home. 



IX 

INTO CALABRIA 

FEW travellers, I suppose, get farther south than 
Paestum upon this coast. It is a pity. The lonely 
majesty of those indestructible ruins should encourage 
one to penetrate farther, but the desolate aspect of the 
country, as seen from Paestum, the silence or vagueness of 
the guide-books about it, the absence of good modem 
inns, above all, perhaps, the fear of malaria, prevent the 
traveller in any impulse he may have to journey into the 
South, and so he turns back from Psestum towards Naples 
without adventuring into what, when aU is said, is by no 
means the least interesting, and certainly not the least 
beautiful, part of a country which from top to toe is all 
compact with delight. 

It was my good fortune to explore the South with two 
companions whom I had lured upon this adventure ; to 
journey, sometimes on foot, sometimes by public auto- 
mobile, sometimes by train, for the distances were too great 
and time too precious to allow of our going all the way by 
road, through the provinces of Calabria and Apulia. The 
country had, we knew, many extraordinary attractions, 
the chief of which was, of course, that here the Greeks 
established their great cities, which all together were known 
as Magna Graecia, of which Paestum formed a part ; but 
there were Roman and mediaeval memories too, and the 
natural beauty of the Basilicata and Calabria, of their 
broken and steep sea-coasts, of the great mountains of the 

Sila and the Aspromonte, together with their almost com- 

137 



138 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

plete isolation from the modern world, seemed to offer 
us much for the small hardships and difficulties of the way. 

Curiously enough, it was only of these hardships and 
difficulties that we heard before setting out. Kindly 
and well-meaning people in Naples who had heard by chance 
of our intention, Italians every one, would have saved us 
from they knew not what. Not one of them had ever been 
into the South — they assured us of that ; it was unsafe, 
uncivilized, a country of brigands, hopelessly lost to the 
modem world, reeking with malaria, and altogether as 
unattractive in every way as any place could well be. 
"What are you going for?" they constantly demanded. 
" There is nothing to see, nothing to eat, no inns, no beds, 
no roads even, and of course no railways ; moreover, you 
wiU certainly be robbed and very likely murdered. . . ." 

Let me hasten to say that what we found was something 
very different from this. To begin with, the roads every- 
where in the South are good, the trains as a rule punctual 
if slow, the inns in the larger places fairly clean and com- 
fortable, the food a little rough and monotonous but 
plentiful. Indeed, there is nothing at all to hinder any- 
one in travelling through the South, or from seeing all that 
is to be seen with a fair amount of comfort and continual 
delight in the monuments and the natural beauty of a 
country for the most part delicious. Indeed, if ordinary 
English travellers who are fond of getting off the more 
beaten track but knew of half the beauty and pleasure 
to be found in Calabria, in the forests of the Sila and upon 
the Aspromonte, they would be found there in increasing 
numbers every year. Calabria is a paradise that has not 
yet been opened to the tourist, and in consequence it 
is quite unspoilt. As for the two things we were chiefly 
warned against, robbery and fever, we had not to complain 
of the one or the other. The people of the South are as 
full of humanity as are other Italians. Every day you 
live you will be robbed in Naples and that with your eyes 
open, for you are helpless and they unashamed ; but in the 



INTO CALABRIA 139 

South it is not so. On the contrary, people are there 
rough-mannered but good-hearted, and a? honesty goes 
in Italy, very honest. You will be fleeced in Milan but 
not in Cosenza, you will receive bad money in Naples 
but not in Catanzaro, and considering the poverty there is 
an extraordinary absence of begging. Not that I object 
to begging ; God knows if a poor man may not demand 
an alms of his fellows, it is a hard and certainly not a 
Christian law which forbids him. Nevertheless, though 
the South is still poor and still Christian, the beggars are 
but few ; they demand courteously in the name of the 
Madonna, without the threats of the Neapolitans, and are 
content with little. 

As for the fever, there is no fear of it at all between 
November and June ; at any rate, we saw nothing of it in 
March, April and May, and except perhaps here and there, 
as in the valley where Sybaris stood, Sybaris which was 
the mother of Psestum, the people seemed to be healthy 
enough and the children rosy and happy, if poor and 
ragged and barefoot. 

Indeed,the only thing the traveller need fear in the South 
is distance : the distances between the greater places, 
and it is only in the greater places that one can live with 
comfort, are enormous ; and this fact alone makes walking 
for the most part impossible. Nowhere else except in 
Spain is distance, I think, so overwhelmingly impressed 
upon the traveller. It is the shadow behind all his 
pleasure, and no day is quite free from its influence. 

It was already midday when we turned away from the 
ruins of Psestum and set out upon the first stage of our 
journey, leaving the city by the Porta Justitia,and presently 
crossing the Solofrone to follow the high road over the 
desolate plain towards the mysterious Southern hills, the 
hills in territorio Cilenti. These twisted and tortured 
mountains, a mass of volcanic craters cut by one great 
winding valley narrow and deep, the valley of the Alento, 



140 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

have from time immemorial been a district apart. Coming 
down steeply westward into the sea, these heights upon 
which towers the noble cone of Monte Stella form the 
southern promontory of the great Bay of Salerno or 
Poseidonia, and like the headland of Sorrento, above which 
Monte S. Angelo hovers, which forms the northern promon- 
tory of the vast gulf, they are ever5rwhere covered with 
woods, with vineyards and olive gardens, with figs and 
almonds. But unlike the northern promontory, this broken 
country of the Cilento is not a country of towns — there 
is not a true town in the whole district — but of villages 
often close together and always upon the hill-tops, for the 
silting up of the mouths of the various streams has made 
the valleys unhealthy and malarious. It is a beautiful and 
a fruitful district, once within the territory of the Phocsean 
city of Velia, which stood upon its southern extremity, 
where the Alento finds the sea. While Velia flourished 
doubtless it was rich, as it certainly continued to be 
throughout Imperial times ; but it suffered terribly from 
the Saracens in the ninth century and all through the 
wars of the Greeks and Lombards of Benevento and 
Salerno, but was repopulated and built up afresh by the 
Cluniac monks of La Cava in the eleventh century, who 
with the assistance of the Benedictines of Monte Cassino 
planted here some eighteen monasteries which quite 
redeemed the country. The abominable administration 
of the Spaniards in the fifteenth century, however, when the 
Barbary corsairs began to descend upon this coast, de- 
populated it anew, and it is only in our time, and especially 
since the evisceration of Algiers, that it is beginning to 
revive. 

It was into this living and pleasant land we came out 
of the desolate plain in which Psestum lies a broken 
sanctuary. For in some two miles or so the road climbing 
out of the marsh began to rise precipitously, and presently 
we stood a thousand feet and more over the sea above the 
village of Ogliastro, and all before us lay the great bay 



INTO CALABRIA 141 

in its beauty and splendour, guarded on the north by the 
steep and broken coast beyond Salerno where Vietri stood 
and Amalfi, Praiano and Positano, how many days' journey 
behind us, out of the sea. That great coast, stretched 
out along the promontory of Sorrento till it came to an 
end in the Punta Campanella, where, a little way off, Capri 
stood on guard like a sentinel, seemed to be lined with the 
houses of a single town so thick the villages shone upon it 
under the great mountains beneath which ran the road 
we had traversed so many days before. Our eyes lingered 
upon it, till suddenly like a shadow beyond Capri one of 
us spied the crater of Epomeo upon Ischia, sixty miles away 
as the crow flies. 

Close at hand as it seemed, but not less than twenty-five 
miles away, in the depth of the bay, lay the city of Salerno 
over the Psestan marsh, and behind, the hills, and over 
them the mountains, and again beyond them and above 
them the central range of the Apennines. Nearer still, 
over the valley of the Sele, Eboli stood up against the 
rude hills of Terminio ; while to the east, behind us, lay all 
this tumble of mountain called the Cilento, and farther 
again mountains, and beyond the darkness of the Apennines. 
And all before us lay the perfect arc of the vast bay, and 
at our feet this great headland answering that of Sorrento, 
crowned by Monte Stella as that by Monte S. Angelo, beaked 
by the Punta Licosa as that by the Punta Campanella. 

But such a catalogue of names can give but a small 
idea of the glorious sweep of sea and air and mountain and 
plain which these hills give to him who climbs them. 
Neither from the heights of Vietri nor from Ravello is the 
prospect comparable with that which these hills command. 
To come so far as Psestum and to go home without a sight 
of this glory is to miss a good half of the pleasure Psestum 
can bestow. But no guide-book speaks of it, and therefore 
the tourist moons for hours about the temples, waiting 
for the train, unsuspecting that so great a spectacle is 
within reach and to be had almost for the trouble of asking. 



142 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

From this great view-point, of which we could not have 
enough, we presently descended to Agropoli. This little 
village stands upon a great rock rising out of the sea just 
where the hills first reach it beyond the Paestan plain. 
It is but a small place, but it is worth seeing on account 
of its situation, its towered walls and old castle dating 
from the Aragon times of the fifteenth century. The 
name is Greek, but Agropoli owes nothing to Magna 
Graecia, being indeed most probably a foundation of the 
Byzantines, perhaps of Narses, who after finaUy breaking 
the Goths at Angri founded many such strongholds. By 
the end of the sixth century it was like most of such 
Byzantine foundations, in possession of a bishop. It 
seems to have flourished until, in 882, it was seized by the 
Saracens, who made it their chief stronghold hereabouts, 
and issuing thence ruined Psestum and all this coast. 
It was the last of their strongholds to be surrendered after 
their defeat on the banks of the Garigliano, and by 1070 
certainly Agropoli was held by Roger of Sicily. The place 
seems to have flourished exceedingly under the Normans, 
the Angevins, and the Aragon kings, until in the middle of 
the sixteenth century the corsairs, and chief among them 
Barbarossa, descended upon this coast and seized many 
places, but chiefly Agropoli and Policastro, the latter being 
utterly destroyed, and the former so ruined that it was 
never able to recover itself. 

Beyond Agropoli the coast thrusts out westward into 
the double headland which closes the Gulf of Salerno upon 
the south. The larger and more southern point is the 
famous Punta Licosa, off which rises a little island where 
according to Strabo and Pliny was the tomb of the Siren 
Leucosia, which names both island and promontory. 
Others, with more reason I think, call this headland Posi- 
donium Promontorium, the promontory of Poseidon. 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, however, calls the island 
Leucasia, and asserts that it was named so after a cousin of 
iEneas, whom the hero buried here, as he did his pilot 



INTO CALABRIA 143 

Palinurus farther down the coast. The headland was well 
known in Imperial times, when both it and the island were 
covered with luxurious villas. It is a delicious spot, 
as beautiful as any of those more famous places on the Gulf 
of Naples which were so popular among the wealthy Romans 
in the first centuries of our era. 

We slept at Agropoli, at the Alb ergo del Sud by the sea, 
and early next morning went on by train, coming down the 
deep and tremendous valley of the Alento on the southern 
side of the promontory through a lovely country to Ascea, 
where we left the railway to return a little way by road 
towards the mouth of the Alento, the ancient Hales, where 
are the ruins of Velia. 

These ruins are set on a low ridge of hill about a mile 
and a half south of the river mouth, and half a mile from the 
sea-coast, over a spacious bay between the great promontory 
of the Cilento on the north, the rocky Punta di Ascea on 
the south. Immediately over the sea, the top of the hill 
upon which VeHa stood is now occupied by the mediaeval 
village of Castellammare della Bruca, doubtless the old 
acropolis, for the walls of the ancient city may still be 
traced all about ; but other ruins of the Greek time are 
wanting, what we see, the debris of aqueducts and build- 
ings, being of Roman date. 

The city of Velia was the only Phocaean colony in aU 
Magna Grsecia, and it came to be founded in this fashion. 
In the year 544 B.C., when Harpagus conquered Ionia, the 
inhabitants of Phocaea rather than come under the Persian 
yoke voluntarily expatriated themselves and went in a body 
to their new colony of Alalia, in Corsica. There, however, 
they suffered so much at the hands of the Carthaginians 
that after a final naval defeat they were compelled to 
abandon their city, and while a part of them went to 
Massiha (Marseilles) the rest went south to Rhegium 
(Reggio) ; but their welcome being anything but cordial 
they soon set out northward again, and presently founded 
a new colony at the mouth of the Hales, upon the coast of 



144 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Lucania. This happened about 540 B.C. We know practi- 
cally nothing of the history of Velia except that from the 
moment of its foundation it was bitterly attacked by the 
people of Poseidonia and their mother city of Sybaris, 
and thus the place would have but little interest for us 
but for two facts, namely, the fame of the school of philo- 
sophy that arose there, and the extraordinary beauty of 
its coinage. That it flourished for all the people of Posei- 
donia could do, that it was wealthy and a famous place, 
seems as certain as that it never rose to the great position 
of such places as Sybaris, Crotona, and Tarentum ; but 
its celebrated school of philosophy has given it the same 
immortality which the temples of Psestum have conferred 
upon Poseidonia or the luxury of the Sybarites has given 
to Sybaris. 

Pythagoras, who gave philosophy its name and passed 

so much of his life in Magna Graecia, regarded the universe 

as a perfect harmony dependent on number : the Eleatic 

doctrine of unity might seem to have been the exact 

opposite of this. The school was founded by Xenophanes 

of Colophon, who was bom about 570. He was the father 

of Pantheism, who declared God to be the eternal unity 

permeating the universe and governing it by his will. 

The greater disciple of Xenophanes was Parmenides, bom 

here in Velia in 511, who declared God to be unchanging, 

" the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever," as we might 

say, and thus to be alone capable of being at all — multitude 

and change, which never are but always to be, having merely 

appearance without reality. The glorious doctrine of the 

school was very ably maintained dialectically by Zeno 

against the vulgar, who see and realize only this multitude, 

this change, this becoming in things, in life, in the universe. 

It was, however, Leucippos of Velia, a disciple of Zeno, 

who should interest us most perhaps, for he was the father 

of the atomic philosophy which boasted such famous 

exponents as Democritus and Epicurus. 

Zeno, we know obscurely, lost his life in maintaining the 



VELIA 145 

liberty of his native city against a tyrant. His example 
as well as his thought would seem to have been cherished 
by his countrymen, who not only maintained themselves 
against the Poseidonians but, if Strabo is to be believed, 
against the Lucanians also. If this were so, Velia was one 
of the very few Greek cities which preserved a real national 
existence in the face of these barbarians. At any rate, 
Velia was early admitted to the alliance of Rome, and under 
Roman government became almost as famous a health 
resort as Baiae. And it continued to flourish until, like 
Paestum, it was destroyed by the Saracens encamped at 
Agropoli in the ninth century. 

Sitting there to-day in that lonely place among the 
stones one tries to recall the thoughts and words of that 
great spirit which first in Europe conceived the idea of the 
Absolute, the One ; and attempted to demonstrate that 
Thought and Being are identical — t6 yap avrb voelv ia-rCv 
T€ Kttt €tvat. " Come ! listen and take home, says he, what 
I shall tell you : What are in truth the two paths of search 
after right understanding. The one that what is, is ; 
and that what is not, is not. This is the path of per- 
suasion, for truth goes along with it. The other is that 
what is, is not, and by consequence that what is not is — 
I tell you that is the way which goes counter to persuasion. 
That which is not never would you know ; there is no 
way of getting at that ; nor could you explain it to another ; 
for Thought and Being are identical." It was perhaps 
while gazing across this very sea from these hills which were 
his home that Parmenides uttered those famous words 
that were after all of so dubious omen — that one day 
would start Don Quixote on his travels. 

From the ruins of Velia before midday we went on by 
train through all the beauty that is Pisciotta within the 
exquisite curving headland of Palinuro to Policastro. 

The beautiful lonely horn of Palinurus thrusts itself 
loftily into the sea between Velia and the old Greek city 
of Buxentum. Of old, the promontory had a port to 
10 



146 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

which it gave its name, and which is still called Porto di 
Palinuro. Both headland and port, indeed, received 
their name from Palinurus, the pilot of ^Eneas, who was 
here, according to Virgil and many other Latin writers, 
cast ashore and buried. 

Princeps ante omnes densum Palinurus agebat 
agmen ; 

In the sixth ^Eneid, Palinurus himself tells the story of 
his death. " Lo, the pilot Palinurus came along, who late 
on the voyage from Libya, while he watched the stars 
had fallen from the stern of the ship, and been tumbled 
into the midst of the waves. MnesiS, when he had hardly 
recognized him, full of sorrow in the thick darkness [within 
the gate of Hades], first addressed him thus : ' Which 
of the gods was it who snatched you from us, Palinurus, 
and sunk you in the deep ? Tell me, I pray. For Apollo, 
though I never before found him a deceiver, deluded my 
soul by this one oracle in that he foretold that you would 
be unharmed by sea, and reach the Ausonian shores. 
Is this indeed his faithful promise ? ' The other an- 
swered : * Neither did the tripod of Phoebus deceive you, 
Prince, Anchises' son, nor did a god plunge me in the 
waves. For in headlong fall I dragged down with me 
the rudder, wrenched away by mishap with rude violence ; 
the rudder which I its appointed guardian was holding 
steadfastly, and guiding the ship's course. By the wild 
seas I swear that I conceived no such great fear for myself 
as for your ship, lest stripped of its helm, and violently 
bereft of its master, it might not live while such a sea was 
running. Three winter nights the south wind wildly bore 
me on the water across the boundless main ; scarcely in 
the forth dawn as I raised myself upward I caught sight 
of Italy from the surface of the sea. By slow degrees I 
swam towards land ; soon I should have gained safe 
ground, had not the ruthless race, while I was weighed 
down in my drenched garments, and striving to grasp 



CAPO PALINURO 147 

with crooked hands the rough points of a crag, attacked 
me with the sword, and in their ignorance thought me a 
prize. Now I He at the mercy of the waves, and the winds 
ofttimes cast me on the shore. Wherefore by the pleasant 
Hght of heaven, by your fathers, I beseech you and the 
promise of your rising lulus, rescue me from these woes, 
unconquered Prince; either cast earth upon me yourself 
(for you have the power) and again repair to the port of 
Velia \ or now if there be any means . . . lend your hand 
to your hapless pilot, and carry me with you across the 
flood [the Styx], that in death I may repose. . . .' So 
had he spoken when the priestess thus begins — 

" 'Whence comes it, Palinurus, that you feel a longing 
so unlawful ? Will you unburied view the waters of the 
Styx ? . . . Cease to hope that divine destiny can yield 
to your prayer. But receive into your memory my 
words the consolation of your hard fortune. For your 
bones the neighbouring tribes far and wide through their 
cities, compelled by signs from Heaven, shall propitiate, 
and they shall set up a mound, and to the mound shall 
bring due offerings, and the place shall keep for ever the 
name of Palinurus.' " 

Servius indeed tells us that the Lucanians, probably 
the citizens of Velia, paid heroic honours to Palinurus, 
and that he had a cenotaph and sacred grove not far from 
the city. Some ruins of ancient buildings are indeed 
to this day to be seen upon the summit of the headland, 
and these are said by the people hereabouts to be the 
tomb of the great pilot. 

To the south of Capo Palinuro opens the vast bay of 
Policastro, closed on the south again, eighty miles away as 
the crow flies, by the Capo Vaticano, the bluff within which 
the ancient Laus, the city which named the whole bay, lay. 
Immediately to the south of the great headland of which 
the Capo Palinuro is the horn, and which is crowned by 
Monte Bulgheria, in the deepest part of the bay, lies 
Policastro, a place of considerable antiquity and import- 



148 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

ance, which Robert Guiscard destroyed in 1055, as did the 
Corsairs in 1542, so that it is now but a village. It was 
founded, it is said, in the fifth century B.C. by the Greeks of 
Rhegium, but its coins lead us to accept an earlier founda- 
tion, and that from Siris, whose colony it apparently 
was. Its name was Pyxus. We know absolutely nothing 
of it, however, until after the conquest of Lucania by the 
Romans, who in 186 B.C. established there a colony, and 
named the place Buxentum. No ruins at aU of the Greek 
city are to be seen, and but little of the Roman town 
even of imperial times. Policastro, indeed, is not worth 
a visit. Far better is it to go on directly to Sapri, where 
there is a fair inn, the Albergo Garibaldi, and where con- 
siderable remains of the old Greek town of Scidrus may 
still be seen. 

The only ancient authority who speaks of Scidrus at 
all is Herodotus, who, however, does not define its situation. 
He tells us that it was like the greater city of Laus to the 
south, which named the whole Gulf a colony of Sybaris, 
and that to both these cities the Sybarites fled away when 
their own city was destroyed by Cotrona. There can, I 
think, be no doubt that the Sybarite colony of Scidrus 
was established here where we now find the town of Sapri, 
and that it was of ancient foundation and not a place 
established by fugitives after the destruction of Sybaris. 
The enormous wealth of Sybaris was due to commerce, and 
this was secured and maintained by communications and 
alliances which kept open the various routes over the 
sea or the mountains which had their terminus on the agora 
of the great Achaean city. A people such as we know the 
Sybarites to have been would be sure to establish them- 
selves firmly upon the Tyrrhene Sea, and this we know they 
were able to do at Poseidonia. But that city, whose mighty 
ruins still fill us with wonder, was too far north and too 
difficult of access from Sybaris to fulfil the whole purpose 
of its founders. They needed a port easily accessible from 
the mother city upon this coast, and this was most easily 



SAPRI 149 

found at Laus, as a glance at the map will assure us. 
Sybaris lay in the delta formed by various valleys at 
that point where the Gulf of Taranto is deepest, and where 
in consequence the peninsula of Calabria is narrowest 
between the Ionian and Tyrrhene Seas. To follow one of 
these valleys, the Valle del Salice, as we call it, to its head, 
to cross the Campo Tenese, the watershed, and to descend 
the valley of the Lao to Laus upon the Tyrrhene Sea was 
the shortest and easiest road from one sea to the other. 
Thus was Laus founded. It might seem that on the same 
principle Scidrus should have been a colony of Siris instead 
of Sybaris, for it was most easily approached from that city, 
from the Ionian Sea up the valley of the Sinni, and it may 
be that in spite of Herodotus this was the case, and that 
Sybaris only came, as it were, into possession of Scidrus, or 
rather that Scidrus only came to depend upon Sybaris after 
that city had destroyed Siris. However that may be, it is 
obvious that the reason for the foundation of these cities 
upon the Tyrrhene Sea was that they could be approached 
overland from the Ionian Sea, and that thus the western 
coast was accessible without a journey round the great gulfs 
of the south and through the dangerous straits of Messina. 

A mere glance at Sapri shows us at once how valuable 
a natural harbour and port it must have offered to the small 
ships of those far-off times. Sheltered on the north by 
the great bluff on which Monte Bulgheria broods, and by 
other lesser and nearer heights, it is held on the south by 
Monte Cerasco, within whose shadow the bay is spread out 
a glorious land-locked pool of safe water, about which the 
most considerable of the remains of the ancient Greek 
city lie in an almost undecipherable confusion. 

If little remains of Scidrus, nothing at all is to be found 
of Laus, in the plain by the river, though in the charming 
little town of Scalea, where there is a good harbour and 
where, in consequence, some have thought the ancient city 
must have stood, a few vestiges of antiquity have been 
disinterred. They are scarcely worth stopping to see. 



150 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Far better is it for the leisurely traveller in Calabria indeed 
to go on to Belvedere, where he may understand the ancient 
economic and political geography of these cities of Magna 
Graecia better than anywhere else upon this coast, and that 
by climbing the hills behind the town whence he will see 
both seas, the Ionian and the Tyrrhene, the Gulf of Taranto, 
and the Gulf of Pohcastro, and realize how narrow is the 
peninsula between them. The beauty of the place, too, 
cannot but enchant him, and no pleasanter way of spending 
a long afternoon is to be had in all this country. At night 
he wiU go on to Paola to sleep. 



X 

FROM PAOLA TO COSENZA 

PAOLA is to-day, I suppose, one of the most important 
places upon this beautiful but neglected coast, for it 
is not only served by the railway, but also two or three 
times a week by a small steamer from Naples. It is, too, 
the port of Cosenza upon the Tyrrhene Sea, and as such 
offers by far the best means of approaching that city, the 
capital of Calabria citeriore, from the north and west. The 
little town stands some hundred metres above the sea on 
the hillside, more than a chilometro from the station upon 
the shore. It is a charming place, alike on account of its 
situation and its buildings, its churches, especially that of 
the Annunziata, and its old convents, in one of which, that 
of S. Francesco da Paola, lived the famous fifteenth- century 
saint of that name. The place is, however, without history, 
and though less primitive than many of the village-towns 
upon this coast, so unused to the sight of strangers that the 
whole population turns out to welcome you and escort 
you to your quarters. As to these you have a choice 
between the Albergo Regina d' Italia, not far from the 
station, and the Albergo Leone, in the upper town, and it 
would be difficult to say which is the least comfortable. 
Perhaps our experience has been unfortunate. The first 
time we came to Paola, we arrived from Belvedere about 
ten o*clock at night. We were the only people alighting 
there from the train, and save for an oil lamp the station 
was in complete darkness. We were vaguely directed along 
a dark and open road and left to ourselves, and indeed, 
if presently we had not encountered an extraordinarily 



152 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

violent tramp, upon whom we loaded our baggage, with 
directions to lead the way to the inn, I often wonder whether 
we should ever have found it. As it was, he brought us at 
last through an almost deserted street to the door, where 
he demanded payment and off he went. It was a long time 
before the noise we made attracted any sort of attention, 
and when at last the door was opened our request for beds 
was met with derision. After mutual reproaches, however, 
we were shown a single room, in which after much per- 
suasion the host consented to erect three beds. This 
settled, our host became all smiles. We demanded food, 
and late as it was we ate there and then the best meal 
we had all the time we were in Calabria. It was nothing 
to boast of neither ! but even a month or two in this 
beautiful but untravelled country makes the traveller 
think with pleasure of the food to be had at Paola. 

The long persuasion that had been necessary to obtain 
us beds, the preparation of the meal, had given the people 
at least of the lower town of Paola time to get up and dress 
in a negligent sort of way — for the whole place was asleep 
when we arrived — and to come to the inn to see the 
strangers. A great company presently filled the dining- 
room, and overflowed into the street. Most of this com- 
pany remained till we had finished, and then followed us 
up to our room, which, since there was no way of locking 
the door, all night and next morning, was, at least for the 
occasion, part of the street. We were, it seemed, as enter- 
taining as a puppet show, and it was only by remembering 
that we were just that, not human at all really in the 
clear and curious eyes of these amazingly interested people, 
that we were able to sleep, to get up, wash, and dress ; as 
it was, I know we abbreviated the washing. One must be 
a true-born puppet to stand and take a bath in a tin pot 
within a circle of children, backed by an exclamatory and 
admiring crowd of men and women, to whom such a thing 
is as strange a spectacle as the fire- eating of the clowns at 
the village fair used to be to U3» 



PAOLA 153 

We were up betimes in the morning, and had plenty of 
time to see Paola and the convent of S. Francesco da 
Paola before setting out for Cosenza. 

S. Francesco da Paola is interesting as the founder of a 
new Order. S. Francis of Assisi had called his f rati Minors 
or Lesser Friars, for he wished them to be humble and poor, 
but S. Francis da Paola was not content with this ; he 
called his frati Minimites, the least of all in the kingdom of 
God. The Saint was born here in Paola in 1416, the longed- 
for son of very poor parents. Having no issue, they be- 
sought S. Francis of Assisi to aid them by his prayers, 
and thus when their son was born he was named Francis 
after the poverello of Assisi. From the first they seem to 
have dedicated him to God. When he was twelve years 
old they sent him to the Franciscans of S. Marco Argentano, 
the nearest episcopal town ; there he learned to read and 
write, and laid the foundation of his ascetic life. After 
a year there, as a lad of thirteen he went with his parents 
on pilgrimage to Assisi and Rome, and on his return to 
Paola with their permission he retired to a lonely place 
half a mile from the town, and shortly after to a still 
more lonely spot, where to-day stands his convent. Here 
he was presently joined by two companions, and the neigh- 
bours built them cells and a chapel, which in 1454 were 
replaced by the large church and monastery we see. Here 
the new Order was established by S. Francis da Paola, 
under a Rule based upon the Franciscan, indeed an ex- 
aggeration of it, both Order and Rule being approved by 
the Archbishop of Cosenza in 1471, and confirmed in 1474 
by Sixtus iv, who established Francis Superior- General. 
In 1476 the Saint began to found other convents, the first 
of which was at Paterno on the Ionian Sea. That Francis 
was of very considerable fame and authority in his day 
is established, if only by the fact that when Louis xi first 
fell into his despair it was Francis of Paola he desired to 
see, and when no other means would bring him to Plessis 
les Tours he besought the Pope to send him. This wa§ 



154 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

done. S. Francis made the tremendous journey, going by 
sea from Ostia, and was met with a purse of ten thousand 
crowns, borne by the Dauphin at Amboise. He arrived at 
Plessis in April 1482, the King going out to meet him, 
falling on his knees and conjuring him to obtain of God a 
prolongation of his life. S. Francis refused to make such a 
prayer, but nevertheless the King lodged him in his own 
palace, and daily conversed with him, and died in his arms 
upon August 30, 1483. King Charles viii honoured Francis 
even more than his father had done, built him a fine con- 
vent in the Park at Plessis, and another at Amboise, where 
he had first met him, and when he went to Rome to be 
saluted Emperor of Constantinople by Pope Alexander vi 
he built the Saint a noble monastery upon the Pincian 
Hill, in which none but Frenchmen were to be admitted, 
and which we still call S. Trinita, though it is now in the 
hands of another congregation. S. Francis remained in 
France till his death, in 1508, at the age of ninety-one, and 
his body remained uncorrupt in the church of Plessis 
till the year 1562, when the Huguenots broke open the 
tomb and dragged the body through the streets and burned 
it "on a fire which they had made with the wood of a 
great Crucifix." The Order wear a dark tunic and cord, 
and the word Charitas appears upon it, and this is the badge 
of the Order. The Saint is generally represented as an 
old man with two companions, or in allusion to his famous 
miracle when he crossed on his mantle from Reggio to 
Messina, as spreading his cloak upon the sea. His convent 
in Paola is picturesquely situated at the end of a long Via 
Crucis, reached from the upper town, but it has nothing 
beside its beauty to recommend it, neither works of art 
nor even a major relic of the Saint who founded it. 

The road for Cosenza ^ climbs up out of Paola very 
steeply for many miles in a marvellous series of curves 

^ A public automobile leaves Paola for Cosenza at 9 o'clock every 
day. Places should be booked overnight. The distance is 36 ghil., 
covered in 3| hours, 




SAN FILI 



FROM PAOLA TO COSENZA 155 

till it crosses the bare ridge of the watershed of the Calabrian 
Apennines, and descends by the scarcely less steep eastern 
escarpment to the large village of S. Fill above the wide 
valley of the Crati. The way up from Paola to the summit 
is exceedingly noble and fine, offering a wonderful view 
of the wide and shallow Gulf of Laus or, as we say, of Poli- 
castro, a view a little featureless after all, though with far- 
away glimpses of noble headlands, but not to be compared 
in any way with the view of the Gulf of Poseidonia from the 
hills above Agropoli to the south of Psestum. Neverthe- 
less, the way is beautiful up through the steep forest, but 
the true splendour of it is only to be had when suddenly 
and unexpectedly from the summit one looks down from 
the woods upon that immense and noble valley of the Crati, 
at the mouth of which eastward once stood the city of 
Sybaris, the greatest of Magna Grsecia, and at the head of 
which westwards stands the famous city of Cosenza, where 
Alaric died and was buried. 

All that valley from your first sight of it seems only 
full of that accursed Gothic army laden with the spoil of 
the Eternal City. Here the barbarian passed, as he thought, 
to the loot of Sicily, but, as God willed, to his atrocious 
grave. Beyond rise the beautiful heights of the Sila, dark 
with woods. We could have looked down upon that valley 
from that height, 3000 feet and more in the air, for hours, 
recalling that catastrophic march, but that the lingering 
sun warned us of the hour, and the milestones spoke of 
Cosenza as still at a great distance. So we went down 
through the chestnut forests to S. Fill, still some 1500 feet 
up, and on, still downward, into the valley, where we came 
into the great Roman road southward, and along it in 
its straight monotony deep in the dust we trudged in the 
wake of the Goths into Cosenza. 

It was still dayhght when we climbed out of the wide, 
profound valley into that noble city, which for how many 
centuries has kept the secret of the barbaric grave of 
Alaric, High up it stands all about a great headland of 



156 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

hills, and in this it is like Segovia, though without the 
splendour of the Spanish city, thrust out between the 
valleys of the Crati and the Busento. There is in all 
Calabria no nobler place than this. 

The inn we chose, the Albergo Vetere, and there are 
several, we chose as much because from its window we 
could look across the Crati Valley to the great woods high 
on the Sila, as because we thought it the best in the town. 
It is in its Calabrian way a very comfortable house, with a 
good and plentiful table and clean beds. There we lived 
gaily, and thence we issued out to see the remarkable 
city where Alaric died. 

It is true that we could think of little else in Cosenza 
but the tremendous Goth, who first with barbarian arms 
smote upon the gates of the Capital of the Empire, de- 
manding what he should for ever have been denied ; but 
Cosenza is older far than Alaric. 

Consentia, as the Romans called the place, was the 
capital city of the Bruttii, the greatest town of that 
barbarous people, and the centre of their movements 
against the cities of Magna Grascia. We first hear of it 
in history, however, in the expedition of Alexander of 
Epirus, and Livy asserts that it was taken by that hero, 
but it would seem that when he was assassinated at Pan- 
dosia, " a little above Consentia,'' a city the site of which 
is unknown, Consentia was still in the hands of the bar- 
barians, and Alexander's mutilated body was brought 
there for burial. During the Second Punic War, Consentia, 
though reluctantly, followed the rest of the cities of the 
Bruttii, was occupied by the Carthaginian General 
Himilco, followed the cause of Hannibal, and was only 
reduced by the Romans in 204 B.C. It was then, accord- 
ing to Appian, a very large place, and continued to be 
the chief city in this part of Italy all through the great 
time of Rome, which would seem never to have wholly 
subdued the tribes of the Sila hereabout. Then in the 
year a.d. 410, at the end of August, Alaric, having sacked 



COSENZA 157 

the Eternal City, appeared upon the Appian Way at the 
head of his army, laden with noble prisoners and the spoil 
of Rome, intent upon the loot of the South and of Sicily, 
and in his train as a captive went along with him Galla 
Placidia, the sister of the Emperor, the daughter of the 
great Theodosius. The Goth marched southward spoiling 
the mighty cities, Capua the capital of Campania, Nola, 
too, which was devastated ; one after another the great 
towns -of the South were ruined and spoiled, till at last 
he came to Consentia. Already it seems the first division 
of the Gothic army had embarked for Sicily, when in the 
midst of a tempest which sunk and scattered their trans- 
ports news came of the death of Alaric. Then, in the 
immortal words of Gibbon, " the ferocious character of 
the barbarians was displayed in the funeral of a hero, 
whose valour and fortune they celebrated with mournful 
applause. By the labour of a captive multitude they 
forcibly diverted the course of the Busentinus (Buxentius), 
a small river that washes the walls of Consentia. The 
royal sepulchre, adorned with the splendid spoils and 
trophies of Rome, was constructed in the vacant bed ; 
the waters were then restored to their natural channel, 
and the secret spot where the remains of Alaric had been 
deposited was for ever concealed by the inhuman massacre 
of the prisoners, who had been employed to execute the 
work." 

After that appalling spectacle, Consentia is wrapt in 
darkness for more than five hundred years. In 988, 
however, we hear of it as taken and destroyed by the 
Saracens, and then in 992 as rebuilt by the Greeks, only 
to be burnt in the beginning of the eleventh century 
again by the Saracens. When in 1050 Pope Nicholas 11 
gave Calabria to Robert Guiscard, Cosenza came into his 
possession without a struggle, but later it rebelled, and 
it was then the great Castello was built to dominate it on 
the hill-top. 

It is from this Castello that one gets the finest impression 



158 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

of the situation of the city, and of the beauty and splendour 
of the country round about. It is a tremendous place, a 
vast keep looking over the valleys to the Apennines upon 
the west, the Sila on the east, down the great valley of 
the Crati between them on the north and southward to 
the tumble of mountains that divides Calabria Citeriore 
from Calabria Ulteriore, the toe of Italy and the Aspro- 
monte. Beneath the Castello the girls sing in the vine- 
yards, children laugh at their play under the olives, and 
all the beauty of Calabria, one of the loveliest provinces of 
Italy, is spread out before you ; but none of these will keep 
your mind from Alaric. Down the wide and noble valley 
from the north rode the barbarian king at the head of 
his thousands and his thousands, train upon train of 
captives bearing the spoil and the loot of Rome. Hither 
he came in the midst of his great success, the first bar- 
barian who had successfully broken into the Empire, 
intent upon the destruction of Sicily, the spoliation of 
Africa. Here he died. Somewhere down there where 
from the great height you may see the Buxentius meet the 
Crathis they buried him, turning the river aside to make 
his sepulchre, and setting about it the gold and silver of 
Rome. There in that unknown place he lies, till God 
shall raise him up and judge him. 

Little to compare with that great view from the Castello 
remains to be seen in Cosenza. The city has suffered, 
especially in the last two centuries, from earthquakes 
which have even damaged the Castle, whose walls are nine 
feet thick, so that little else that is old has escaped damage 
or destruction. Among that little, however, is happily 
the Cathedral, a Gothic building, in so far as it remains 
ancient, of the thirteenth century, consecrated in 1222 
in the presence of the Emperor Frederick 11. There lie 
King Henry of Germany, the eldest son of Frederick ii, 
Isabella, the Queen of Philip iii of France (1270), and 
Louis III of Anjou (1435). The other churches are scarcely 
worth a visit, but the town itself is picturesque, especially 




COSEXZA, FROM THE CASTELLO 



COSENZA 159 

in its higher parts under the Castello, where the steep, 
narrow ways are very well worth the fatigue of the climb. 

If for a time we forgot Alaric in Cosenza it was to the 
Sila we turned. Those great mountains, dark with forests 
rising to the east over the valley, impress you with their 
dark beauty all day long. Somewhere there you remind 
yourself the Neaithos rises of which Theocritus sings. 
It is this stream with all its riches of green herbage and 
trees that you come upon if you adventure into these great 
hills and come over the watershed, as in summer-time you 
may do, by public automobile, to S. Giovanni in Fiore, 
some 3000 feet above the sea, in the very heart of the Sila. 

This village began to rise in the sixteenth century 
about an ancient monastery, one of the most famous in 
Italy in the twelfth century. There Joachim da Fiore ^ 
founded his new Order, the Ordone di Flora, and wrote 
those amazing works, the most celebrated of which was, 
or perhaps only was to have been, The Eternal Gospel, 
which seems to have had so great an influence upon the 
Franciscans, and indeed upon religious thought generally 
in Italy in the thirteenth century. It is a long way to 
S. Giovanni, some seventy chilometri from Cosenza, but the 
beauty of the road and the interest of the place are certainly 
worth any trouble and fatigue they may cost. 

^ For an account of Joachim, see my Cities of Umbria (5th ed., 
Methuen, 1913), pp. 261-277. 



XI 

TO CATANZARO AND REGGIO 

FROM Cosenza you may go very easily down the 
great valley of the Crati by train to Sybaris upon the 
Ionian Sea, and thus come immediately into the heart of 
Magna Grsecia, but the wiser traveller will not hesitate, 
I think, to take advantage of the new service by automobile, 
which will take him right across central Calabria and over 
a great shoulder of the Sila to Catanzaro, a hundred 
chilometri southward, the capital of Calabria Ulteriore. 
That long journey, occupying at least seven hours, is very 
well worth making, for it takes you through some of the 
most beautiful parts of this extraordinarily beautiful 
country, crosses a great mountain range, and though it 
offers you nothing so dramatic as the sudden view of the 
great valley of the Crathis which the road from Paola 
to Cosenza affords, at Tiriolo, near the end of your journey, 
you may look upon both seas, the Ionian and the Tyrrhene, 
the Gulf of Squillace on the east and the Gulf of S. Euf emia 
on the west. 

The road first proceeds up the valley of the Crati to the 
source of that famous river ; then passing under the 
village of Donnici it descends into the valley of the Arbicello, 
crosses the torrent, and climbs up to the Piano del Lago, 
some fourteen chilometri from Cosenza and 2000 feet and 
more over the sea. Here it crosses a part of the Sila, passing 
through the little mountain town of Rogliano above the 
Savuto, the ancient Sabatus where of old there was a 

Roman station. Rogliano was the Rulianum of antiquity, 

160 



TO CATANZARO i6i 

but little or nothing remains there that is very old, for the 
place has suffered much from earthquakes, and was almost 
destroyed in 1638. The road climbs up to Rogliano 
through delicious forest, and beyond the village descends 
through a beautiful country to the Savuto, which it crosses 
to climb up by many winding ways to Carpanzano, whence 
it is possible to see the Tyrrhene Sea. 

At Carpanzano the road turns eastward, climbing all 
the way till it reaches a height of well over 3000 feet, and 
a little beyond the village of Corace crosses the southern 
hill-tops of the Sila Piccola and descends into Soveria 
Mannelli. In this rather desolate village you leave the 
automobile that has brought you from Cosenza, and after 
a wait of an hour and a half, in which it is well to get some 
luncheon at the local ristorante, a by no means bad little 
place, another automobile arrives to take you on to 
Catanzaro. 

There can be no doubt that these automobile services 
which are now everywhere in Italy are doing very splendid 
work in opening up the less accessible parts of the peninsula, 
such as the mountain districts of Calabria and the Marches.^ 
In a country such as this, where the distances are enormous 
and the whole country so far away from any great centre, 
one cannot praise the enterprise of modern Italy enough 
in establishing this admirable means of getting about. 
Here are two sub-units of a great province, Calabria 
Citeriore and Calabria Ulteriore, each with its capital, 
Cosenza and Catanzaro, to reach either from other before 
the coming of the automobile meant a journey of two days, 
almost impossible in winter and always full of a sort of 
misery. To-day you may leave Cosenza at half -past seven 
in the morning and be in Catanzaro by half -past two, or 
you may leave Catanzaro at half -past eight in the morning 
and be in Cosenza b}^ half -past three. And besides the two 
capitals, how many hamlets and villages the automobile 
serves. It is enough to notice the difficulty of obtaining 
^ Cf, my Cities of Romagna and iMM^arqlies (Methuen, 1913),, p., l8,8. 
II 



i62 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

seats to see at once how welcome it is to the people. 
It is cheaper, and certainly as expeditious as most of 
the railways here in the South, and quite as comfortable. 
Moreover, it can go where the railway cannot penetrate ; 
it passes not under but over the hills. In all things it 
is to be praised ; and its effect upon the isolated com- 
munities of this glorious but neglected and despised 
Calabria cannot but be good, for little by little people will 
come into the South from Central Italy, and Calabria will be 
discovered. When that happens a new playground will be 
opened for us all, and such a one as we have never dreamed 
of. For there can indeed be few provinces of Europe 
lovelier or nobler than this, with its great mountain ranges 
covered with primeval forest, miles of glorious woodland, 
and an air so soft and yet so exhilarating that no other 
hills in Europe can boast the like. Alike in spring, summer, 
and autumn these mountains are a paradise ; they should 
gather wealth for Italy from the rest of Europe, and that 
should be employed in draining the v/ide valleys of the sea- 
coast, which of old supported a great population, but which 
are to-day utterly lonely on account of the malaria which 
ever3rwhere holds them in its grip all the summer and 
autumn through. But even after two thousand years let 
no one any longer despair of the South. With the new 
communications it will be rediscovered, and again it will 
lift up its head. Here rather than on the sands of Lybia 
lies the field for Italy's new energy ; here, in this virgin and 
fruitful soil, which has been resting for two thousand years 
and awaits every day with more impatience the labour 
of the delivering peasant, the gold of the capitalist, the love 
and enthusiasm of Italia La Nuova. 

The automobile is indeed to be praised, for it has made 
such a belated resurrection possible and even certain ; but 
in its minor results it is still disquieting to the populace. 
By reason of the great hills that stand everywhere in ranges 
throughout Calabria, of which the Sila and the Aspromonte 
are but th§ greatest, the roads continually and without 



(l 



*^ 



^ 



.--_ ^.,?:.^ 




1 i K 1 ' 



TO CATANZARO 163 

ceasing wind up and down in so astonishing and so many 
series of curves and hairpin corners that the countrymen 
and burgesses who travel in the new pubHc conveyances 
which hurry along at a really frightening speed are all sick 
by reason of them. Indeed, upon the run from Cosenza 
to Catanzaro my companion and I were the only travellers 
in the packed machine who were not continually leaning 
out of the window. 

Soveria Mannelli is about half-way between Cosenza 
and Catanzaro. There the road forks, the western branch 
proceeding over the Monti di Nicastro to Nicastro, the 
eastern road passing along a high ridge some 3000 feet high, 
over Serrastrella, past S. Pietro Apostolo, to the town of 
Tiriolo, whence one may look upon both seas, the Ionian 
to the east, the Tyrrhene to the west, while to the south 
rises the long peaked ridge of the Aspromonte. 

Tiriolo is indeed one of the loftiest towns of Calabria, 
standing over 2000 feet above the sea. The place is the 
Ad Turres of the Antonine Itinerary, and many antiquities 
have been found there, more especially a table of bronze, 
now preserved in the Imperial Museum at Vienna, upon 
which is incised the text of a decree of the Senate of 186 B.C. 
which forbade the celebration of the Bacchanalia. This 
discovery was made in 1640. But in our own day a large 
number of terra-cottas of the last Greek period have been 
unearthed here, and are now preserved in the Museum of 
Catanzaro. 

For the traveller the dehght of Tiriolo is the costumes 
of the women, which are most beautiful and picturesque. 
With the coming of the automobile it is to be feared these 
will disappear, but they have not gone yet. Almost 
every girl in the place wears the old-fashioned dress of the 
commune and is, and not only on this account, a delight to 
the eyes. 

Tiriolo is divided from Catanzaro by the vast gorge 
of the Corace, down the western side of which the road 
winds very steeply and giddily to the river, which it crosses 



i64 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

and thence climbs up on the other less lofty side to Catan- 
zaro, about looo feet above the sea. 

Catanzaro is built upon a lofty and precipitous shoulder 
of rock between two deep valleys that unite before it, 
and proceed onward together, ever widening, towards 
the sea. In the main it consists of one long street, which 
runs from north to south till it comes to an end above the 
steep southern escarpment of the great hiU on which the 
city stands, in the garden where the ruins of a castle built 
by Robert Guiscard still remain. Upon this side the 
city slopes a little towards the valley in a few windy 
alley-ways almost mediaeval in their picturesque dilapida- 
tion ; but for the most part Catanzaro stands along the 
hill-top, strikingly new in appearance, a clean, healthy, cool 
town, where a breeze that easily becomes half a gale of 
wind always seems to blow, and where everyone seems to 
be happy, healthy, and hospitable to strangers. There are 
in this unexpectedly modern town several inns, two of which 
certainly deserve the name of hotels. That we chose was 
called the Brezia, and there we found every sort of reasonable 
comfort and attention ; it might have been in Siena for that. 

Catanzaro would seem to have been founded like Agro- 
poli, by the Byzantines, indeed in the time of Nicephorus 
Phocas, in the tenth century. In 1055, however, it came 
into the hands of Robert Guiscard, who recognizing its 
strategic importance as commanding the shortest road of 
all between the Ionian and the Tyrrhene Sea, there built 
the strong castle whose ruins we see. Under the Norman, 
indeed, the town flourished exceedingly, and was divided 
into four quarters, in which the Latins, the Greeks, the 
Amalifitani, and the Jews dwxlt apart ; the two latter 
peoples having established themselves here for the sake of 
commerce. Catanzaro then boasted twenty-eight churches, 
a relic doubtless, as Lenormant reminds us, of the Greek 
rule, that rite not permitting more than one mass to be 
said in any church daily. 

Time and earthquake have left but few of these churches, 



CATAN2AR0 165 

and not one that is recognizable as a Byzantine or Norman 
foundation; indeed, all are dishearteningly modern, and 
without either beauty or interest. One of them, however, 
S. Domenico, or La Chiesa del Rosario, contains a fine 
Venetian picture of the sixteenth century, in which we see 
S. Domenico receiving the Rosary from the Blessed Virgin 
and her little Son. 

A work perhaps by the same master is to be found in the 
little Museo near the Castle : this is a Lucretia. But the 
most beautiful thing here is a helmet, a Greek work found 
at Tiriolo, and a number of terra-cottas, vases, coins, and 
other curiosities, for the most part from the district. 

The true delight of Catanzaro is to be found in its 
extraordinary situation and the amazing views it offers 
you of the great country in which it lies. To the south, 
and for the first time, you see before you something of the 
bitter desolation of the coasts of the Ionian Sea, where long 
and long ago, in all their beauty, energy, and pride, stood 
the great cities of Magna Graecia, the memory of which 
names, even to-day, all this country. To the east from 
the Giardino Pubbhco you look upon the strange valley 
of the Crotalus between its sheer and barren cliffs, an 
extraordinary, bitter, desolate place, on which it might 
seem the sun never shines. Uphfted above this curious 
and arid country in which the priapal agave and the cactus 
form the chief vegetation, hedging in the olives, the vines, 
and the rare patches of corn, Catanzaro alone seems to 
laugh, ever in the wind, high above the fever belt and the 
malaria of the empty vales and littoral. The town is 
indeed a sort of refuge thrust out from the hills into the 
midst of this dead country which from Reggio to Taranto 
is washed by the Ionian Sea. 

Something of the strategical value of Catanzaro in 
ancient times as in the Middle Age may be best understood 
by journeying by the light railway from the uphfted town 
across the hills from the valley down which the Corace 
runs into the Ionian Sea to the vaUey of the Lametus 



i66 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

(Ameto), which empties itself into the Tyrrhene Sea. To 
the north above the valley and the plains of Maida stands 
the town of Nicastro, a Byzantine foundation in whose 
castle Frederick ii confined his rebellious son Henry, who 
lies buried in the Cathedral of Cosenza. 

Frederick ii had two sons by his first wife, Henry and 
Conrad, whom he caused, each one during his lifetime, 
to be elected King of the Romans. But in 1240 King 
Henry perceiving, as Villani tells us, " that the Emperor 
his father was doing all he might against Holy Church, 
and feeling the same heavy upon his conscience, time and 
again reproved his father, for that he was doing ill ; whereat 
the Emperor set himself against him, and neither loving 
him nor dealing with him as with a son, raised up false 
accusers, who testified that the said Henry had it in his 
mind to rebel against him as concerning his Empire, at 
the request of the Church. On the which plea (were it 
true or false) he seized his said son King Henry and two 
sons of his, little lads, and sent them . . . into prison 
severally ; and there he put him to death by starvation in 
great torment, and afterwards Manfred put his sons to 
death. ..." 

Upon the other side of the Lametus lies the plain of 
Maida, the field of the only battle ever fought by British 
troops upon Italian soil. This battle, fought in 1806 
against the French army of General Regnier, resulted in a 
victory for Sir John Stuart. That General was in command 
of the British forces then in occupation of Sicily when 
upon July I, 1806, he landed 4800 men in the Gulf of 
S. Eufemia. The French upon the southern side of the 
Lametus occupied the wooded hillside of Maida, but they 
outnumbered the British force and, confident of success, 
they crossed the river and came on to meet us in the 
plain. They came, and were met with the bayonet, and 
the result does not seem to have been in doubt for a 
moment. They fled, leaving 4000 men upon the field ; 
the British casualties amounting in all to 327. But before 



MONTELEONE 167 

the end of the year the French were again in possession 
of Calabria. 

S. Eufemia, the little town which to-day gives its name 
to the ancient Sinus Terinaeus, is chiefly famous for the 
Benedictine monastery founded there by Robert Guiscard, 
in which he placed the head of the martyr S. Eufemia, 
which he brought from Constantinople. All, however, was 
destroyed in the earthquake in 1638. It stood upon the 
site of the Greek city of Terina, a colony of Crotona, and 
was regarded as the burial-place of the Siren Ligeia, and 
consequently would seem to have been older than the 
Greek settlement, whose date we do not know, nor indeed 
are we acquainted with its history, though the number, 
beauty, and variety of its silver coins bear witness to its 
wealth and importance. 

From the railway junction of S. Eufemia the railway 
from Naples proceeds south over the plain, and presently 
under the hills along the coast to Pizzo, where in the 
castle Murat was done to death in 1815. His body lies 
beneath a plain stone in the parish church. 

The great Roman highway, the Via Popilia, runs through 
Pizzo, and leaving the coast there proceeds across the hills 
to the gloriously situated city of Monteleone, 1500 feet 
above the sea, which still boasts of a ruined castle built 
by Frederick 11. 

Monteleone stands upon the site of the Greek city of 
Hipponium, a colony according to Strabo of Locri upon 
the Ionian Sea. We know, however, almost nothing of it 
save that it was taken in 389 B.C. by Dionysius of Syracuse, 
who destroyed it and carried away its citizens to Sicily. 
With the assistance of the Carthaginians, however, these 
exiles returned. Presently the city fell into the hands 
of the Bruttii, but was taken from them in 294 B.C. by 
Agathocles, who established a naval station there, and 
for a time held the place, which upon his departure was 
seized again by the Bruttii and his garrison put to the 
sword. These barbarians held it thenceforth until the 



i68 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Roman conquest of the peninsula. Under the Romans 
both city and port flourished exceedingly, it became a 
very important place, and Appian indeed speaks of it as 
one of the '' most flourishing cities of Italy." In the 
civil wars it played a very considerable part, its situation 
at the point where the Via Popilia first touches the sea 
no doubt giving it a great strategical and economic im- 
portance. The ruins of the city would seem to have 
disappeared if it was situated upon the hill where Mon- 
teleone stands, but considerable remains may still, in spite of 
time and earthquake, be seen of the port at a place called 
Bivona (Hippo nium, Vibonia, Bivona), some three miles 
from that lofty town, upon the shore, where there remains 
also a mediaeval Castello. 

To the south-west of Monteleone the high lands over 
which that city shines thrust out westward and south 
from the beautiful southern headland of the Sinus Teri- 
naeus, the Gulf of Eufemia. Upon this headland stood the 
old Roman Herculis Portus, on the site of which stands 
Tropea to-day, most beautifully situated upon a preci- 
pitous rock thrust out into the sea above a delicious bay, 
all surrounded by woods and olive gardens and vineyards 
and villages. Above all the city stands the church, upon 
its steep and cavernous rock rising sheer out of the sea, 
within a vast amphitheatre of great hills far in the back- 
ground. Beyond, southward, the railway runs quite round 
the great headland by the great Capo Vaticano, which 
may be reached also by road from Tropea, a walk of about 
six miles. That walk is worth taking not only on account 
of the glorious beauty of the coast here, but because from 
the high land above the Capo Vaticano one may first see 
snow-crowned Etna and the Sicilian mountains over the 
incomparable beauty of the sea. Far and far away they 
lie, like ghosts on the horizon beckoning you on into a 
world the loveliest we may know. 

One proceeds by paths and tracks along the headland 
over the trailway to Nicotera, and thence across the mouths 



REGGIO 169 

of the Mesima and the great plain or marsh of Gioja, upon 
the farther side of which, just upon the hills, stood the 
ancient city of Metauria. 

It is here, amid the horrid desolation of the Plana di 
Gioja, that one enters upon the country so awfully made 
desolate by the earthquake of 1908 which destroyed 
Messina. Signs of this appalling calamity are indeed still 
very visible even as far north as Pizzo, but it is here at 
Gioja that one begins to realize what that disaster really 
was. Indeed, in all the exquisite loveliness of the coast 
between Gioja and Reggio through the Straits of Messina 
scarcely a village is left. Of Palmi amid its gardens, its 
orange groves, and wonderful olive-yards, really only the 
glorious views of the island are left to us. It is best to 
leave it, to forget, and to climb thence through the olive 
gardens, the great hill of Monte Elia upon whose slopes 
it lies in ruin to gaze upon Etna and Sicily, the Straits 
down which you may look as into the noblest of bays, 
the glory of the sea in which like jewels lie the Lipari Isles 
and smoking Stromboli, and eastward the great mountains, 
the Aspromonte dark with forests. 

And if Palmi seems to have been destroyed, what can 
one say of Scilla, at the mouth of the Straits, of old so 
famous ; what of Villa S. Giovanni, where the coast so 
wonderfully turns suddenly southward; of Reggio itself, 
amid all the loneliness God has here poured out of His 
heart ? Here are nothing but ruins, about which linger 
even yet an incredible romance and the rumour of Homeric 
verse amid the tragic litter of the buildings of the Middle 
Age, the Renaissance, and the modern world. We enter 
Magna Grsecia to-day through a ruined gate. 



XII 

MAGNA GR^CIA 

WE speak of Magna Grsecia and think of all those cities 
founded by the Greeks hundreds of years before the 
coming of Our Lord, east and west between Taranto and 
Reggio along the shore of the Ionian Sea ; but in fact 
Magna Graecia meant more than this, for it included those 
colonies founded upon the Tyrrhene coast between 
Poseidonia and Hipponium, though never, as we may 
think, the oldest settlements of all at Cumse and Neapolis, 
Nevertheless, we are right after all when in speaking of 
Magna Graecia we think first of the cities within the Gulfs 
of Taranto and Squillace along the Ionian Sea, for these 
were the original settlements from the mother land, the 
Tyrrhene cities, with the exception of the Phocsean city 
of Velia, being but their colonies. Magna Graecia indeed 
was, whether in its larger or narrower sense, this above all, 
a long string, as it were a rosary, of cities, not a territory ; 
the name was never used in a territorial sense as including 
the whole or part of Southern Italy, it was only applied to 
the Greek cities on the coasts, and corresponds most nearly 
to Livy's expression, Grcecorum omnis ora^ The Greek 
inhabitants of these cities were known to the Greeks of 
the mother lands as 'IraXtwrat ; that is to say, the Greeks 
in Italy, while the Italians were of course ol "IraXSi. 

As I have said, the most ancient settlement of the 

1 Livy, xxii. 6i. The same historian uses the name Graecia Major, 

but the commonest title of all was undoubtedly Graecia Magna. The 

term did not, of course, include the Greek cities in Sicily. 

170 



MAGNA GR^CIA 171 

Greeks in Italy would appear to have been made at Cumae, 
and this was very ancient indeed, some placing it as early 
as 1000 B.C. Cumae, however, was so remote, and perhaps 
for early navigation so difficult of access by reason of the 
approach through the Straits of Messina and of Capri, that 
it remained isolated from its later sisters in the South 
and never made a part of Magna Grsecia. 

Cumae thus isolated from Magna Graecia was not only 
the otdest of the Greek settlements in Italy, but it was 
older than those in Sicily, which are themselves older than 
any city of Magna Graecia. The settlements upon the 
southern shore of the mainland followed those upon the 
island, and for the most part may be said to date from 735 
to 685 B.C. ; but we have unfortunately no record of their 
foundation and history in any way comparable with that 
preserved by Thucydides concerning the Greek cities of 
Sicily ; nevertheless, we may state certain facts with 
some certainty. 

We know, and this without doubt, that the Achaeans, 
a people always undistinguished in the history of Greece 
proper, were the earliest colonists here upon the mainland 
of Italy and that they founded the two greater cities of 
Magna Graecia, first Sybaris in the Gulf of Taranto in 
720 B.C., and then, ten years later, in 710 B.C., Crotona upon 
the eastern side of the great headland which divides the 
Gulf of Taranto from the Gulf of Squillace. 

About the same time, according to Strabo, the Locrians 
founded the city of Locri near the modern Gerace, and two 
years later, as we may believe, in 708 B.C., the Dorians 
founded Tarentum, and it was to hold them in check that 
at the prayer of the Sybarites the Achaeans founded about 
700 B.C. the city of Metapontum, some twenty-seven miles 
along the shore to the south-west of Tarentum. 

Some twenty-five years later, about the year 675, the 
lonians of Colophon, having been conquered by Gyges, 
King of Lydia, emigrated westward and founded the city 
of Siris here upon the Gulf of Taranto between Sybaris 



17^2 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

and Metapontum ; while about the same time the 
Chalcidians founded Rhegium within the Straits of 
Messina.^ 

Such were the chief Greek cities upon the Ionian shore 
of the Italian peninsula ; the Greek cities upon the 
Tyrrhene Sea were, as I have said, with one exception, 
VeUa, a Phocaean settlement, all colonies of these cities, 
and not original settlements from the mother lands. Thus 
Poseidonia, Laus, and Scidrus, as we have seen, were all 
colonies of Sybaris ; Terina was a colony of Crotona, as 
was Hipponium of Locri. As for the minor cities upon 
the Ionian shore, Scylletum (Squillace) was a dependence 
of Crotona, and Heraclea a fortress of Tarentum. 

AU we know of the early history of these settlements 
and colonies amounts to very little, but it would seem that 
one and all they flourished and became exceedingly pros- 
perous, and indeed in size, wealth, and power they far 
exceeded the cities of Greece proper at this time. The 
fertility of this district, which they drained and cultivated., 
the facilities for commerce, were doubtless exploited to the 
utmost, and Sybaris especially enjoyed a luxury and a power 
without parallel at that time ; she ruled, it is said, in the 
days of her greatness, over twenty-five subject cities and 
extended her suzerainty over four nations of the local 
barbarians, while her name has become a synonjmi for 
luxury. This period of prosperity would seem to have 
lasted for some two hundred years — till about 510 B.C. In 
that year Sybaris was destroyed by Crotona, and with the 
fall of the greatest of the cities of Magna Grsecia a decline 
seems to have set in both in -prosperity and good fortune. 
The weakness of all city states, and of the Greek especially, 
was a miserable jealousy that always had something of 
the vindictive bitterness of a personal enmity. We have 
seen Sybaris call upon the Achseans to oppose the new 
Dorian foundation of Tarentum by the foundation of 

^ Some consider Rhegium as an earlier foundation even than 
Sybaris. 



MAGNA GR^CIA 173 

Metapontum. Later we see the three great Achaean cities, 
Sybaris, Crotona, and Metapontum, utterly destroy the 
Ionian colony of Siris, and again the two cities of Locri 
and Rhegium combine to destroy though not altogether 
successfully, not finally at least, Crotona. In that battle, 
the battle of the Sagras, it is said that Crotona put 120,000 
men into the field. The especial foolishness of these 
internecine feuds and wars will be obvious when it is 
remenibered that these Greek cities were but little islands 
of civilization in a sea of brutish barbarism — a thing in- 
effectually perceived, too late. 

Crotona would seem scarcely to have recovered from 
her defeat, indeed she had long endured a wretched de- 
pression, when about 530 B.C. the half -mystic and always 
mysterious philosopher and statesman Pythagoras suddenly 
appeared from the East within her walls. He was then 
about fifty years old, having been born upon the island 
of Samos about 580 B.C. The few facts we know of him, 
for his life is almost wholly shrouded in the legends which 
grew up about his amazing personality, lead us to believe 
that he was a disciple of Pherecydes of Syros, and that he 
spent a great part of his earlier life in travel in the East, 
where he studied those civilizations and the religions which 
had created them, and especially the " wisdom " of the 
Egyptians. It seems that when, the most learned man 
of the day, he would have returned to Samos, he found 
his country still under the yoke of the tyrant Polycrates, 
and almost by chance, indeed quite romantically, he came 
to Crotona in Magna Gr^ecia. Here he found the political 
and social life of the Greeks, and more especially in 
Crotona itself, half ruined by the bitterness of parties, 
the hate of one city for another. It was his mission, as 
we might say, to bring about a revolution in ideas, to 
reorganize not Crotona alone but all Magna Graecia and 
to regenerate that precious civilization. To this end 
he appears to have established a society, perhaps secret, 
whose members seem to have undergone some sort of 



174 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

initiation when they took upon them half-priestly vows of 
chastity, an enlightened morality and devotion the one 
to the other. With this weapon he sought to refound 
as it were a real and perhaps united Magna Grsecia out 
of the old and decajdng and too various states. In part 
he succeeded. But his society was too like an aristocracy, 
a Samurai, to please the populace, which rose against him 
and his followers in Crotona and slew 300 of them, Pytha- 
goras himself, it is said, escaping to Metapontum, where he 
died in 504. 

That Pythagoras was to fail at least in his larger aim 
must, it might seem, have been evident to him six years 
before his death, when the Crotoniats, 100,000 strong, 
it is said, went out against Sybaris, which put not less 
than 300,000 men into the field, so we are told, overthrew 
her on the banks of the Traeis, and razed the city to the 
ground. From this appalling catastrophe, followed as it 
was by the expulsion and death of Pythagoras and the 
massacre of his adherents. Magna Graecia never really 
recovered. The Sybarites attempted to refound their 
city without success, they established a new settlement 
close to the site of Sybaris, and called it Thurii ; this too 
came to nothing : many of them fled at last for refuge to 
their own colonies, and especially to Laus and Scidrus. 
Sybaris was no more, and Magna Graecia for all its 
splendour was unable or unwilling to send the mother 
country any assistance to meet the Persian invasion, nor 
so far as we know, though help was demanded of the 
Greeks in Sicily, were these cities of Magna Graecia appealed 
to. The same indifference, a thing even more extra- 
ordinary, seems to have characterized the cities of Magna 
Graecia two generations later upon the outbreak of the 
Peloponnesian War, nor did they take any part in the 
Athenian raid upon Sicily in 415 B.C., though all the 
Greek cities in the island were involved in the affair. 
The only cities of Magna Graecia that at any time showed 
any interest in Sicily or in Greece were Rhegium, which 



MAGNA GR^CIA 175 

under the rule of the despot Anaxilas (496-476 B.C.) 
became involved in Sicilian affairs by reason of its annexa- 
tion of Messina on the other side of the Straits, and 
Thurii, which had been refounded in 443 B.C. by a body of 
colonists led by Athenians. This city induced Meta- 
pontum to ally herself with Athens, and with her suppHed 
a small force to assist the expedition of 415 B.C. 

The true explanation of this indifference, apart from 
the general softness induced by wealth, and the bitter 
jealousy of one city for another, will be found, I think, 
in the fact that each of the cities of Magna Graecia was, as I 
have said, but an island of civilization in a sea of barbarism. 
Already in the earlier part of the fifth century, in 473 B.C., 
theTarentines, though assisted by three thousand Rhegians, 
had suffered an appalling defeat at the hands of the bar- 
barians, the lapygians of the district in which their city 
stood. Herodotus tells us that this was the greatest 
slaughter of Greeks within his knowledge. If it was the 
greatest, it was not the first nor the last, and with the 
advance of the fourth century B.C. this appalling danger 
became more and more threatening. Yet even in the face 
of annihilation the Greeks could not combine : it was 
only when, about this time, they were threatened by 
a Greek city, that they made at last a loose League, or 
confederation. 

The Greek danger that threatened the cities of Magna 
Grsecia came from Syracuse, where Dionysius had estab- 
lished himself as tyrant not only over that city but over 
the greater part of Sicily. The ambitions of Dionysius 
were first opposed by the Rhegians, who had already 
interposed in Sicilian affairs. To oppose Rhegium, Diony- 
sius allied himself with the Locrians, and his cause thus 
became so formidable in Magna Graecia that a confedera- 
tion was formed among the other cities, but without 
success. Pressed on the north by the barbarians and 
from the south by Dionysius, the confederate army was 
utterly defeated by the latter near Caulonia, about half;^ 



176 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

way between Locri and Scylletum, in 389 B.C., and in 
387 B.C., after a siege of eleven months, Rhegium was sur- 
rendered. 

This foohsh civil war by no means discouraged the 
barbarians who were continually raiding and pressing 
upon the Greek cities. The first and most formidable 
pressure came on the north from the Lucanians, who had 
conquered the (Enotrian tribes of the province to which 
the victors had given their name. These formidable 
barbarians had met already with more than one success 
against the Greeks before they possessed themselves of 
Poseidonia, the first Greek city actually to come into their 
hands. Poseidonia was followed about 390 B.C. by Laus, 
and when the Bruttii, a new enemy, appeared, the position 
was so serious that the younger Dionysius, who had suc- 
ceeded his father, was forced to join the Greek confedera- 
tion against the barbarians whose assistance he had 
formerly invoked. His efforts, however, do not seem to 
have added much to the effectiveness of the League, 
and Terina and Hipponium suffered a similar fate to that 
of Poseidonia and Laus, while Rhegium and Crotona had 
already suffered so severely from the elder Dionysius 
that they were only just able to maintain themselves 
against the barbaric raids. Every city in Magna Graecia 
was enfeebled by these catastrophes, and only Taren- 
tum, far away to the north-east and especially defended 
by nature, was really able to stand, and perhaps still 
to increase in wealth and strength. At last even Tar- 
entum became afraid. She had been the last city of 
Magna Grsecia to join the confederation, and as one 
by one her sisters confined themselves to defence, she 
appealed to her mother city Sparta for assistance. This 
was given by King Archidamus, but without success, for 
he was finallj^ defeated near Manduria, twenty-four miles 
east of Tarentum, in 338 B.C. 

It was now a hero appeared for a moment, to deliver, 
if it were possit)Je, civilisation from the cruel hands of these 



MAGNA GR.ECIA 177 

barbaric tribes. The deliverer was Alexander, King of 
Epirus, who appeared at the head of an army in Magna 
Graecia in 332 B.C., and not without success. He retook 
Terina, and even penetrated into the heart of the territory 
of the Bruttii, but the essential Greek weakness soon 
manifested itself even in so desperate an hour as this ; 
the Tarentines quarrelled with him, and when he was 
murdered in 326 B.C. by a Lucanian exile serving in his 
army, they rejoiced, though that miserable event put 
their whole cause once more in peril. 

The fourth century came to an end in utter anarchy ; 
more than one figure appears as though to deliver civiliza- 
tion from the ever - advancing barbarians, only to fall, 
utterly unworthy of the great cause he had sought to use 
for his own aggrandisement. Such was Cleonymus, the 
uncle of the Spartan king who came to deliver Tarentum 
in 303 B.C., but quitted Magna Graecia at last, " the object 
of an universal contempt." Such Agathocles, who made 
himself master of Crotona and played the part of Judas, 
allying himself with the barbarians to possess himself of 
Tarentum. He died without achieving his end in 289 B.C. 
Seven years later the mighty shadow of Rome fell upon 
all Magna Graecia. 

It was the Thurians who called in the Romans to 
their assistance when they were besieged by the Lucanians. 
That was in 282 B.C. But such a deliverer appeared to 
Magna Graecia as a whole, and especially to Tarentum, now 
the most powerful of its cities, worse than the barbarians. 
They called Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, the successor of Alex- 
ander to aid them against this last foe, and to the same 
end made alliance with the barbarians, who knew and 
feared the Roman yoke. Such was the disastrous policy of 
all Magna Graecia. Pyrrhus, when he landed, found himself 
supported by this strange alliance ; but after his early 
successes he achieved nothing, and when at last after years 
of fighting he finally departed in 274 B.C., Magna Graecia 
was ruined and utterly at the mercy of Rome, which already 

13 



178 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

held Crotona and Locri, while in 272 B.C. Tarentum fell, 
and Rhegium in the following year. Thus Rome became 
master by force where she should have been welcomed as 
an ally. The mistaken policy of Magna Grsecia is obvious 
in the fate of Heraclea, which having opened its gates 
obtained an alliance with Rome on very favourable terms, 
and long continued in a prosperous state. Rhegium, too, 
seems to have made the best of her bad fortune, but the 
other cities now enslaved and in poverty nursed their 
hate against the Roman name. 

The political aptitude of Magna Grsecia, always small, 
always incapable of conceiving a large policy, proved 
now to be non-existent. When Hannibal appeared in 
Italy, winning victory after victory, only Heraclea 
and Rhegium refrained from supporting the Carthaginian 
cause. It was in a very real sense a betrayal of Europe. 
Led by Tarentum, whose citadel, however, remained 
throughout the war in the hands of its Roman garrison, 
Magna Grsecia supported the Orientals, with the result 
that might have been expected. When the Romans 
under Fabius at last entered Tarentum in 209 B.C. the 
city was treated like a prize of war, burnt and plundered, 
and its inhabitants put to the sword. Six years later, 
Crotona learned also the price of the Oriental alliance. 
Hannibal had long made that city his headquarters when 
he determined to obey the order of recall he had received 
from Carthage. From Crotona he set out, and when his 
allies refused to accompany him he had them led down 
to the sea in companies and butchered by thousands. 
Baal that day was satiated. 

The long series of wars in Magna Grsecia, which ended 
with the victory of Fabius and the departure of Hannibal, 
had ruined the Greek cities beyond revival. Their popu- 
lation was decimated, nay more, halved, and with the 
failure of administration, of public works and agriculture 
following inevitably upon this, the rivers silted up and 
flooded, the land went out of cultivation, malaria appeared. 



MAGNA GR^CIA 179 

the cities, with the exception of Rhegium and Tarentum, 
and in a lesser degree of Crotona, were deserted and became 
mere rains, and the whole littoral became pestilent, as 
it largely remains to this day. Magna Graecia, as Cicero 
tells us, " nunc quidem deleta est." It remains for the 
most part a beautiful savage country, lonelier and more 
deserted than any other part of Italy, with here and 
there a stray ruin, a heap of stones from those far-off 
days, but for the most part almost without a memory 
of that great civilization which had ennobled it with 
cities whose names are household words. 



XIII 

REGGIO, GERACE, AND THE GULF OF 
SQUILLACE 

REGGIO DI CALABRIA has to-day nothing but the 
spectacle of her latest misery to offer to the traveller. 
The most unfortunate of ItaHan cities, she has from her 
foundation suffered every violation of nature and of man ; 
fire, sword, and earthquake have from time immemorial 
continually laid her in ruins. Her foundation, as I have 
said, she owes to the Chalcidians, who ''in a year of famine " 
dedicated a tenth part of their people to ApoUo, and these 
the Oracle at Delphi sent to found a new city upon a site 
already chosen for them by their Chalcidic brethren of the 
city of Zancle, which we know as Messina. With the new 
colonists was united a body of Messenian exiles who had 
for a time established themselves at Macistus, a town of 
Triphylia in Elis. These, however, were few in number, 
and until the end Rhegium was considered as a Chalcidic 
city, as was Zancle across the Straits. 

It may be that Rhegium was the most ancient of all the 
Greek settlements in Italy save Cumse alone, that she was 
older than Sybaris ; but this is far from certain, the most 
general opinion being that the city was founded not in 
the eighth but in the seventh century B.C. In any case, 
Rhegium soon became very prosperous, her aristocratic 
government encouraging both her military power and her 
commerce. We know, however, little of her earlier history, 
the one certain fact in it being that she sheltered the 
fugitive Phocseans after their expulsion from Corsica before 

x8o 



REGGIO i8i 

the foundation of Velia. It was, however, in the first years 
of the fifth century B.C. that Rhegium came to her own. 
This happened under the beneficent rule of the tyrant 
Anaxilas, about 494 B.C. He was a Messenian and an 
aristocrat, a member of the famihes that had ruled Rhegium 
since its foundation. He made himself lord not only of 
Rhegium but of Zancle, upon the other side of the Straits 
in Sicily, which he renamed Messana (Messina). He was 
thus master of the Straits, and as such in a very strong 
position with regard to all the cities of Magna Grsecia. 
It was he too who first fortified the headland of Scylla 
and established a naval station there, whence his ships 
issued out against the Tyrrhenian pirates that were so 
terrible a scourge upon the commerce by which all Magna 
Graecia lived. He was faced, and perhaps outfaced, 
by the Locrians and their ally, Hieron of Syracuse. 
He managed, however, to keep the peace with these 
powerful enemies during his hfetime, even marrying his 
daughter to the Syracusan tyrant, expecting his friend- 
ship. This wise policy was followed after his death 
in 476 B.C. by the guardian of his two sons, Micythus, 
who ruled for nine years during their minority. It was 
this man who very properly supported Tarentum against 
the barbarians, and though the auxiliary force he sent 
was massacred with a loss of 3000 men, had his poUcy 
been consistently followed, and had the Greeks held 
together, the later history of Magna Grsecia would not 
have been the unrelieved misfortune it is. 

With the disappearance of Micythus, however, the dis- 
asters of Rhegium begin. The two sons of Anaxilas on 
attaining their majority abused their power, and were soon 
expelled (461 B.C.). A period of anarchy followed, which 
seems presently to have involved Rhegium and the Chal- 
cidic cities of Sicily, whose cause she espoused, in hostilities 
with Locri and Syracuse, though she took no part at all in 
the great Athenian expedition of 415 B.C. This, however, 
did not save h^r from Dionysius of Syracus^j who having 



i82 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

destroyed the Chalcidic cities upon the Island was opposed 
by Rhegium, to the disgust of Messana. Thus Rhegium 
lost the control of the Straits, and was compelled to make 
peace with Dionysius. He for his part expected her 
friendship and alliance in the attempt he contemplated 
against Carthage, but Rhegium refused his request ; 
whereupon he made a new alliance with the Locrians, 
and ever after remained the enemy of Rhegium, in 394 B.C. 
seizing and refortifying Messana after its destruction by 
the Carthaginians, thus making himself master of the 
Straits, in 389 B.C., after two and unsuccessful attempts, 
on the morrow of his victory over the confederation of 
Magna Grsecia upon the Helorus, he forced her to make 
a miserable truce, which was soon broken, and two 
years later, after a siege of eleven months, Rhegium was 
taken, her citizens sold as slaves, and the city itself utterly 
destroyed. 

From this appalling calamity of 387 B.C., the first of a 
long series, Rhegium never recovered. That she rose 
again at all was due wholly to the strategic importance 
of her site, but her history henceforward would appear 
to be an unrelieved disaster. When Pyrrhus entered Italy, 
for instance, Rhegium admitted a body of 4000 Roman 
auxiliaries for her defence, but these barbarians turned 
upon her citizens and massacred them. The traitorous 
army remained in possession of the city till the end of the 
war against Pyrrhus, when Rome dealt with them, reducing 
Rhegium by force, and putting to death the survivors of 
the defence by order of the Roman people. 

Rhegium, such as it was, remained faithful to Rome 
throughout the Second Punic War, but it played no great 
part in that heroic affair. It thus won the favour of Rome, 
but its inhabitants did not become Roman citizens till 
after the Social War. It was about this time that we first 
hear of the city suffering from earthquake, which in 191 
B.C. partially destroyed it. But it was rebuilt, and under 
Augustus a^ain increased in wealth and power, and con- 



REGGIO 183 

tinued to exist as a flourishing city until the collapse 
of the Imperial administration. Its appalling adventures 
since then have become notorious. It fell to Alaric in 
410, who tried and failed to cross the Straits from its port. 
It was taken in 549 by Totila, in 918 by the Saracens, in 
1005 by the Pisans, in 1060 by Robert Guiscard, and was 
burnt out by Frederick Barbarossa. Rebuilt, it was 
sacked by the Turks in 1552 and burnt to the ground by 
them in 1597. Rebuilt again, in 1783 it was totally 
destroyed by earthquake, as it was again in 1908. It is 
now a mass of ruins, scattered with mere shelters, but is 
slowly being rebuilt, certainly to be destroyed again in 
time to come, since it lies upon the direct line of volcanic 
disturbance between Etna and Vesuvius. 

It is with rehef one leaves the ruins of Reggio, more 
dreadful and more dismal by far than those of Pompeii, 
for they are our own. Here in 1908 perished 5000 people, 
and yet as one gazes upon the debris it might seem a 
wonder that anyone escaped ; in fact, however, not less than 
30,000 people got away with their lives out of that appalling 
calamity. 

Southward one goes out of the misery of Reggio, through 
the riches of the valley of S. Agata under S. Leo, round 
the beautiful Bay of Pellaro, south-east out of the Straits 
across which Etna towers, to the Capo delF Armi, the 
ancient Promontory of Leucopetra, that white headland 
which is the end of the Apennines, the extreme south- 
west point of Italy towards the Sicilian Sea. This was 
the last point in Italy which Demosthenes and Eurymedon 
touched with the Athenian expedition before they crossed 
to Sicily ; here Cicero turned back to Rome after the 
death of Caesar. Yet it is not with them one occupies 
oneself upon these white rocks, but with the glory and 
the beauty of Etna, which all the way round this coast 
fills the eyes and the mind with its incomparable majesty. 
With this wonder ever upon the horizon one passes over 
the barren rocks and sandhills about Melito, the mo3t 



i84 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

southern town in Italy, famous for the landing and the 
surrender of Garibaldi, and proceeding onward crosses the 
Amendolea, which the ancients called the Hal ex, where stiU 
the grasshoppers sing and are silent, through desolation 
and wilderness to Capo Spartivento, the ancient Pro- 
montorium Herculis, after passing which, as Strabo says, 
the traveller's course lies suddenly north-east. 

Capo Spartivento is the south-eastern headland of this 
vast promontory or peninsula of the Bruttii; passing it 
one looks eastward towards Greece over the Ionian Sea. 
At Capo Spartivento, very weary and disheartened because 
of all the desolation of the coast here at the foot of the 
Aspromonte, the scarcity of the villages, the barbaric 
Greek of their few inhabitants, the darkness of the heights, 
the wilderness that here lines the classic sea, we took 
train for Gerace, for the road beyond the Marina di Bran- 
caleone is steep and difficult, leaving the desolate shore 
for the more desolate hills, while the line clings to the 
sea, the only friendly thing in all this country. So we 
went on to Gerace, which we entered just before sunset. 

The Marina di Gerace, which the railway serves, hes, as 
its name implies, upon the shore, and there is the inn, 
wretched enough, yet by no means impossible ; but Gerace 
proper, the town of that name, lies five miles and more 
up on the hills, and is to be reached only by a steep and 
difficult road, that it takes the diligenza nearly three hours 
to pass. It was, however, our first business to see the 
ruins and the site of the old Greek city of Locri, and thither 
we turned back very early on the morrow of our arrival. 
These ruins lie some two miles to the south-west of Gerace 
Marina, beside the road from Capo Spartivento between 
three precipitous hills and the sea. There is not much 
to be seen : the foundations of a Temple of the Ionic order 
of the fifth century B.C., a part of the old walls, a smaller 
Temple, and a shrine, little beside ; but musing there in 
that wild and desolate place one may recall the glory that 
is departed. 



LOCRI 185 

From the shore at Locri, looking south-west, one may 
descry the abrupt headland of Capo Bruzzano far away, 
the ancient Promontorium Zephyrium. It was there the 
Locrians founded their first settlement, removing thence 
presently to this spot and building here a city which they 
called Locri Epizephyrii, in memory of their first place of 
abiding. Here under the Zaleucan code, the most ancient 
written code of laws given to any Greek state, the Hundred 
Houses ruled the city, for Locri, like Rhegium, was 
politically an aristocratic oligarchy, only its ruling families 
derived their nobility from the female side, and, as we 
might expect, the city was noted for its good government 
and order, as in the modem world Venice and England 
have been, and for its aversion from all innovation. 

We do not know when this city was founded, but it 
would appear to have been established soon after Crotona, 
about 700 B.C. The most notable event in its history is 
the extraordinary victory it won at the battle of the 
Sagras, when a small force of 10,000 Locrians defeated 
an army of 130,000 Crotoniats. This would seem to have 
befallen after the fall of Sybaris before Crotona in 510 B.C., 
and consequently when the latter city was at the very 
height of its power. The victory was so wonderful and 
so decisive that it passed into a proverb. The smallness 
of the Locrian force certainly confirms what every other 
fact we know about Locri points to, that it was but a 
small place, and never rivalled either in wealth or power 
such cities as Sybaris and Crotona. It seems to have used 
what power it had with some dexterity, allpng itself with 
Syracuse to hold Rhegium in check ; and to ensure this 
in the time of Dionysius the Locrians married Doris, the 
daughter of one of the Hundred Houses, to that monarch, 
in return receiving many benefits, among them the territory 
of Caulonia and that of Hipponium, where they founded 
a colony, but they lost the place to the Carthaginians in 
379 B.C. 

It was indeed in Locri that the younger Dionysius found 



i86 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

a refuge when he was expelled from Syracuse in 359 B.C. 
This proved a horrible misfortune for the Locrians, for 
he seized and garrisoned their city, debauched their wives 
and daughters, and turned a place perhaps the most con- 
servative in Magna Grsecia into a pandemonium. At 
length, however, they seized the opportunity of his absence 
to drive out his garrison and to massacre his wife and 
daughter. 

There can be little doubt that the smallness of Locri 
tempted the barbarians of the Bruttii long before they 
dared to think of Sybaris and Crotona. Perhaps this 
fact taught the Locrians to rely so much upon Syracuse, 
at any rate it certainly drove them later to seek the pro- 
tection of Rome. She sent them a garrison of auxiliaries, 
but these the Locrians expelled when Pyrrhus appeared, 
preferring his troops. However, they conducted them- 
selves so ill that they were expelled. When Pyrrhus 
heard of it he threatened to sack the city, and did indeed 
carry off '* the sacred treasure of the Temple of Perse- 
phone," the most famous sanctuary of that Goddess in 
Magna Grsecia. He was compelled to restore his loot, 
nevertheless, being caught in a storm which threatened 
to engulf him. It is probably part of this Temple of 
Persephone which is to be seen to-day in the shrine ex- 
cavated in 1910. 

The days of misfortune were, however, by no means over 
when Pyrrhus departed. The Bruttii were always about 
to overwhelm a place so small and now so feeble, and 
therefore Rome was again invoked. Had Locri but 
remained true to her great protector she might, in spite of 
everything, have endured in prosperity. But with the 
advance and the victories of Hannibal she threw in her 
lot with him, and when he was disposed of, Rome returned 
no longer as a protector, but as a harsh and absolute lord. 
From that time we know nothing of Locri, which, however, 
seems to have continued to exist — the excavations prove 
that a Roman city certainly stood here — till in the sixth 



GERACE 187 

century of our era it was exterminated by the Saracens, 
and time and disaster have made of it since what we see. 

We returned along that desolate coast from the ruins of 
Locri, glad enough to see the modern houses of the Marina 
di Gerace, and on the morrow climbed up to Gerace itself, 
high on the hillside, perhaps 1500 feet over the sea. Here 
in this amazing eyrie we found the refuge of the people of 
Locri, when their city was overwhelmed by the Saracens 
in the sixth century. All along the Ionian coast of Italy 
the Greek cities by the sea were deserted for the hills, 
for such inaccessible nests as this ; and here you may 
find the debris of their civilization, all that could be saved 
of its material beauty and pride. Gerace is wretched 
enough, God knows, and the earthquake has not spared 
it, but there remains there the shell of a Romanesque 
Cathedral of the eleventh century, modernized and spoilt, 
but still upheld by the ancient columns of Locri, twenty 
pillars of marble, beautiful and august of verde antico, of 
giallo antico, of African marble, and six fluted columns 
of white Greek marble, with their original bases and 
capitals, exactly similar, it is said, to that of the monu- 
ment of Lysikrates at Athens. Others, too, remain in the 
crypt. Nothing else is to be found here that may have 
come from Locri, but the church of S. Francesco dates 
from the thirteenth century and is worth a visit, and the 
old Rocca, now in ruins, affords one, perhaps, the finest 
view to be had between Capo Spartivento and the Punta 
di Stilo. 

Beyond Gerace the railway, always clinging to the 
shore, runs through a country not less desolate than that 
it has traversed from Capo Spartivento. Here and there 
a picturesque town rises out of the brutal country as at 
Roccella, and all the way the classic names we know from 
Ovid and from Livy abound. One crosses the Buthrotus 
(Novito), the Lucanus (Locano), and Roccella itself is but 
Ovid's Romechium, while a Httle farther the iron road 
bridges the Sa^as that once flowed with Crotoniat blood. 



i88 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Here beside the wide river-bed to the north was set the 
city of Caulonia, that Achaean city which Dionysius 
destroyed after the battle of the Helorus and refounded 
from Locri. 

The train goes on through a country so silent and dark 
that it seems inhuman, till it passes the Promontorium 
Cocinthum, the Punta di Stilo, and turns due north into 
the vast Gulf of Squillace, closed on the north very far away 
by the Lacinian Promontory sacred to Hera. 

It is only along the shore that this country, so strangely 
silent and deserted there, is brutal and inhuman. Nothing, 
for instance, in all this peninsula is lovelier than the valley 
of the Stilo, up which a little railway runs, to Stilo high in 
the air, built in terrace after terrace, under sheer rocks 
that rise nearly a thousand feet above her. Here in this 
wonderfully picturesque place, with its mediaeval, round- 
towered gate, or rather above it on a vast rock, is a curious 
Byzantine church, under a central cupola, supported by 
marble columns, and supported and surrounded by four 
smaller buildings under cupolas, at the angles. It is 
Greek work, and helps to prove what one always half 
suspected, that Magna Grsecia, in some strangely pro- 
vincial way, became Greek again after the fall of the 
western Empire — Greek again, but with a difference which 
may best be expressed, I expect, by using a word more 
expressive of the truth, Byzantine. Here in this sixth- 
century building we feel that strange Renaissance to be 
more real than ever we may do in Ravenna, which for all 
its mosaics remains Roman, the mighty citadel of the 
Roman tradition and administration throughout the 
Dark Ages. 

It was already sunset when we returned from Stilo to 
Monasterace on the main line of the railway, and because 
we had not slept in comfort for three nights we deter- 
mined to make for Catanzaro, passing Squillace, of whose 
inns we heard nothing but evil, to return to it on the 
following day. It was well we did so, at least so we 



SQUILLACE 189 

thought on the next day when we dimbed that almost 
inaccessible rock five miles from the railway and the sea 
in the most ramshackle conveyance I have ever used. 

Squillace really beggars description. It stands on 
a rock so precipitous that it can only be approached 
from the west, and though from afar it is picturesque 
enough, when one has reached it, there is nothing to see — 
a squahd village under the ruins of an old Norman castle, 
itself a ruin, windswept and forbidding. Only the view 
repays you, giving you dark Sila to the north, Aspromonte 
to the south, and all between them the sea. And this 
is Cassiodorus, " bunch of grapes," shining in the sun ! 

As it seems, however, Squillace does not stand upon 
the site of the ancient Scylaceum. Perhaps for the first 
time Lenormant was wholly mistaken when he made 
that assertion. We had all our labour for nothing. The 
site of Scylaceum, the birthplace of Cassiodorus, to which 
he returned with such joy at the end of his busy and useful 
life, is not at Squillace, but at Roccelletta, above the 
valley of the Corace, close to the Marina di Catanzaro. 
There its ruins remain. We came to these in the after- 
noon on our way back to Catanzaro, but found little to 
see. The whole of this coast is but a graveyard, in which 
more often than not the tombs have been rifled and the 
gravestones have fallen away. 



XIV 

CROTONA 

NORTHWARD from the Marina di Catanzaro the rail- 
way crosses a desolate marsh country, cut and divided 
by the mouths of many rivers at the foot of the hills, 
which here stand back from the sea, before it turns inland, 
some twenty miles from Catanzaro to cross the Lacinian 
Promontory, upon the northern side of which in the Gulf 
of Taranto Cotrone lies under its citadel beside the sea. 
Nothing can be drearier or more sinister than this desolate 
marshland, which is utterly deserted, save for a few houses 
about the railway stations, without even a village. The 
whole littoral is in the grip of the malaria ; the stations 
themselves are entirely wired in to keep out the poisonous 
mosquito, and such poor folk as one sees upon the plat- 
forms, the children especially, look ill and wretched. Surely 
the proper drainage and tillage of all this country would 
be a more glorious enterprise for the Italian Government 
than the watering and reclamation of the desert of Tripoli. 
Cotrone lies upon a little low promontory within the 
great northern headland of the Lacinian peninsula, the 
Promentorium Lacinium proper, famous throughout the 
Greek world for its Temple of Hera, and now upon that 
account called Capo delle Colonne. It is a curiously busy 
but rather wretched place, which, on account of its haven, 
I suppose, does a thriving trade in oranges, olives, and so 
forth ; and the inn, the Albergo Concordia, is, except 
those in the upper town at Catanzaro and at Taranto, 

horrible though it be, the best upon this coast. Cotrone 

190 



CROTONA 191 

itself, however, the town we see, has no attractions at all 
for the traveller, but the history of the place is so famous 
and important that no one who comes this way can 
afford to pass it by, while the site of the great Temple 
of Hera upon the headland to the south cannot be left 
un visited. 

Croton or Crotona, which we call Cotrone, was, as I 
have said, one of the greatest and most important cities 
of Magna Grsecia. Founded in 710 by a colony of Achseans 
led by a certain Myscellus, a native of Rhypae, in obedience 
to the Oracle at Delphi, the city owes its name, so of old it 
was asserted, to that Croton who, living hereabout, received 
Heracles into his house when he was driving the bulls of 
Geryon across Italy. It seems that the king of this country, 
Lacinios, was unfriendly to the demi-god, and refused 
him shelter. Heracles avenged the insult by killing him, 
but during the fight Croton, the son-in-law of Lacinios, 
who had married the king's daughter, Laura, would have 
aided the hero, but Heracles seeing him approach mistook 
his intentions and killed him also. Understanding too 
late of what a crime he had been guilty, the hero raised 
a mighty tomb over the body of his victim, whom he buried 
with customary rites, prophesying to the natives, there 
assembled, that one day over the tomb of Croton a mighty 
city would rise and bear his name. So far the legend. 
Philologists, on the other hand, assert that the name 
Crotona is Pelasgic and the same as Cortona, the great city 
of this people in Etruria. However that may be, we know 
that the Crotoniats paid especial honour to Heracles, whom 
they regarded as their tutelary divinity, and to Croton, who 
was their national hero. 

All we know of Crotona before the arrival of Pythagoras 
in the middle of the sixth century B.C. is that it rapidly 
rose to great wealth and power, and though it was never so 
luxurious a city as Sybaris, its rival, its walls were twelve 
miles round about, and it extended its power as Sybaris did 
right across the Bruttian peninsula to the Tyrrhene Sea, 



iga NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

where it founded the colony of Terina, while upon the Ionian 
coast towards Locri it established as an outpost the city of 
Caulonia. The Crotoniats, indeed, would appear to have 
been an energetic, athletic, and in comparison with the 
Sybarites a stern and even a puritan people. The climate 
was certainly better here on the headland, then as now, 
than in the low valley of the Crathis — *' more healthy than 
Croton " was a proverb in the old Greek world, while 
the women of the city were the loveliest in all Magna 
Graecia, and the men the strongest, the best soldiers, and 
athletes. *' Crotona," says Strabo, " seems to have given 
herself above all to the production of soldiers and athletes. 
It happened, for instance, in the same Olympiad, that the 
seven victors in the Stadium were all Crotoniats, so that it 
was said and with truth that the last of the Crotoniats was 
still the first of the Greeks." Crotona, indeed, could boast 
of more victors in the Olympic Games than any other 
city of the Greek world. The famous Milo of Crotona 
was six times victor in wrestling at the Ol3nTipic Games, 
and as often at the Pythian. He it was who carried a 
heifer five years old on his shoulders through the Stadium 
at Olympia, and afterwards ate the whole of it in a single 
day. He was a follower of Pythagoras, and is said to 
have commanded the army which broke Sybaris in 510 B.C. 
His end was curious and terrible. In his old age, passing 
through a forest one day, he saw the trunk of a tree which 
had been half split by the woodman. He tried to rend 
it altogether, but the wood closed up his hands and held 
him fast till he was devoured by wolves in the night. 

What the government of Crotona was before the coming 
of Pythagoras we cannot say for certain, but according to 
lamblichus it was an oligarchy, power being vested in the 
hands of a council of 1000 who claimed to be descended 
from the original inhabitants ; and in this it resembled 
Sybaris before the rebellion. But the advent of Pytha- 
goras to Crotona, about 540, led apparently to great changes. 

The extraordinary and adventurous life of Pythagoras, 




CALABRESE PEASANT GIRL 



CROTONA 193 

if we may believe anything of his legend, would seem 
especially to have fitted him for the strange and at last 
the disastrous part he played in Magna Graecia. He had 
travelled everywhere in Greece, in the East, in Egypt, 
had seen the courts and the politics of all civilized com- 
munities, had penetrated the mysteries of his own people, 
of the Phoenicians, and especially of the Egyptians ; for at 
Thebes he is said to have lived twenty-two years in the 
temple' there, and he had too often been a prisoner not to 
be a despot. It was indeed as a captive that he left Egypt 
at last in the train of Cambyses, the general of Darius of 
Babylon, at forty-four years of age, a slave in the heart of 
Assyria. There he became the friend of a certain physician 
of Crotona, for even then Crotona was famous for its 
physicians as for its athletes. This physician one day 
cured Darius of a sprain, and as a reward asked that he 
might return to his native city. This the king granted 
him, but on the way the ship was driven into Tarentum 
and all were taken prisoners ; but when the Tarentines 
found that the physician was of Crotona they let him go. 
Then he came to Crotona, and found there a certain 
Tarentine exile who being very rich ransomed the 
Persian prisoners out of the hands of the Tarentines his 
countrymen, and sent them back to Darius ; and this he 
did, begging two favours, namely, that Darius would make 
the Tarentines receive him again, and that he would set 
free the famous magician Pythagoras, and to this he was 
prompted by the physician. And Darius granted him 
what he asked ; and Pythagoras returned to Samos, but 
when he found his home still in the hands of a tyrant he 
turned toward Magna Grsecia and his benefactor, and took 
ship and came to Crotona, where he founded the amazing 
brotherhood which passes under his name. 

Exactly what this society was we do not know. It 

consisted of 300 members bound by a vow to Pythagoras 

and to each other, and was at once religious and political. 

It would appear to have spread through all Magna Graecia 

13 



194 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

and to have been an attempt to establish some sort of 
governing sect, a sort of Samurai. The whole movement 
excited the enmity of the populace and led to a great 
democratic revolution which changed the government of 
half the cities of Magna Graecia and led to the expulsion of 
Pythagoras from Crotona. But this did not happen all at 
once. It certainly seems to have been during the years of 
Pythagoras' greatest influence that the appalling war 
broke out between Crotona and Sybaris, in which the latter 
city was wholly and finally destroyed. This happened in 
510 B.C. 

The cause of the sudden quarrel between the two most 
famous and powerful cities of Magna Graecia, hitherto 
friendly rivals, is for the most part unknown to us. We 
can but suppose that the moral revolution worked by 
Pythagoras, a sort of revival of asceticism, and his attempt 
to form a real confederation of the Greek cities of Magna 
Graecia was laughed at and refused by the wealthy and 
luxurious Sybarites, who had by reason of too great 
prosperity fallen into a strange impiety and scorn of all 
religion. Perhaps the influence of Pythagoras in Sybaris 
had already begun to be felt, an influence ascetic and 
aristocratic in its intentions. At any rate we know that a 
democratic reaction occurred in Sybaris ; certain Sybarites, 
presumably followers of Pythagoras, found refuge in 
Crotona, and upon their expulsion being demanded, and 
refused, the Crotoniat ambassadors sent to Sybaris were 
massacred ; whereupon war broke out. Milo the athlete 
led the Crotoniat army of 100,000 men against the 
Sybarites, who are said to have put no less than 300,000 
into the field. The two armies met upon the banks of 
the Traeis, when the Sybarites were utterly destroyed 
and their city razed to the ground. 

The democratic revolution or reaction which had thus 
brought Sybaris to nothing soon after appeared in Crotona, 
and the first event of which we have any evidence after 
the democratic expulsion of Pythagoras is the amazing 



CROTONA 195 

defeat sustained by the Crotoniats 130,000 strong at 
the hands of the 10,000 Locrians upon the famous field 
of the Sagras which dyed that river red with Crotoniat 
blood. 

This was but the first of a long series of disasters which 
at last brought the city, once so famous, to obscurity. 
It placed itself at the head of the League which opposed 
Dionysius, which was defeated by that despot upon the 
river -Helleporus, and not long after Crotona fell into his 
power. Dionysius held it for twelve years, and when he 
was gone he left it distracted by parties and in peril from 
the pressure of the Lucanians and the Bruttians. It 
suffered still more in the following years from enemies 
within and without, and when Pyrrhus was gone even 
the extent of the city was reduced by not less than a half. 
Indeed, when Hannibal broke into Italy, and, after victory 
after victory, appeared here in the South, it was altogether 
at his mercy, even the citadel being obliged to surrender, 
though it was long defended by a few of the aristocratic 
party. The roadstead, the only possible port hereabout, 
was useful to Hannibal, and the citadel of Crotona became 
in his hands his principal fortress upon this coast, and when 
at last he determined to return to Carthage it was here 
he embarked, massacring upon the shore all those his 
Italian and Greek allies who refused to accompany him. 
It might seem as though this shore, desolate since then, 
were still under the shadow of that appalling act. 

Having burnt his magazines and store - houses and 
barracks, and slaughtered 4000 horses with all the sumpter 
beasts of his army, Hannibal began the long embarkment 
of his troops, the most redoubtable regiments of which 
since he had lost the Gauls were composed of Campanians, 
Samnites, Lucanians, and Bruttii. These especially he 
wished to take with him that he might face Scipio upon 
the Carthaginian soil and not without success. He offered 
them, therefore, increase of pay, and did all he could to 
persuade them to follow him to Carthage. They refused. 



196 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

He therefore assembled them and caused them to lay down 
their arms, and this done he surrounded them with his 
African troops. Then he gave the order, and before his 
eyes these savages shot down the Italian mercenaries 
with flight after flight of arrows until all were dead, for 
they could neither fly nor resist. And this he did lest 
they should be enrolled by the Romans because he 
was a Carthaginian. Well said Cato : " Delenda est 
Carthago." 

No one certainly coming to Crotona to-day would guess 
her ancient dignity and long, long history. Not a stone 
remains of the ancient city, and the place to-day is alto- 
gether wretched save for the delight of the orange gardens 
in which it is embowered, and the noble sea over which 
the old citadel looks out ever towards the mother land 
eastward. It would be useless to visit so miserable a town, 
devoid alike of beauty and antiquity, but for the fact that 
it is only from Crotona one may reach the Lacinian pro- 
montory, where there still stands in majestic loneliness 
and silence a single column over the sea of that great 
Temple of Hera which was so famous through the Greek 
world. 

The low headland upon which this column stands lies 
some seven or eight miles from Crotona to the south, 
and can be reached either by sea in a fishing-boat or by the 
road, or rather track, along the low cliffs. This road passes 
first the cemetery, a walled Campo Santo full of flowers, 
and presently reaches the little haven or roadstead of 
Porto Berlinghiere. Thence it climbs along the steep 
escarpment of the hills over the sea, and soon becomes 
just a perilous track over a precipice guarded upon the 
landward side by a sheer wall of tufa. This dangerous 
passage safely passed, one comes out upon the downs of 
the headland itself, sweet with thyme and all sorts of wild 
flowers. Before one lies a valley which divides the cape 
into two parts and is called " La Fossa del Lupo," or as 
we might say ''Wolfs Hole" ; it is full of trees and 



CROTONA 197 

undergrowth, and has served in times gone by as a nest 
and hiding-place for pirates. A few villas are scattered 
about, summer houses of the well-to-do Crotoniati, and 
upon the very end or head of the low promontory rises 
the beautiful solitary column, all that now remains of the 
great Temple of Hera. 

It is perhaps impossible to convey to the reader the 
impression of noble and tragic beauty which this lonely 
column, standing upon that far headland in the midst of 
that classic sea, makes upon the traveller. Beyond any- 
thing else in Magna Graecia it recalls that fair and ancient 
world which is so irrevocably lost ; and if only for this 
reason it is better worth the trouble and fatigue of a visit 
than any other fragment left to us upon all this coast. 
Here the Greeks worshipped and the maidens laid their 
offerings ; here Pythagoras lingered in contemplation, 
gazing over the sea : for, as one may still understand, the 
place itself was sacred, if only because of its beauty : 
the temple in its glory and perfection only expressed 
what after all was inherent here in earth and sky and 
sea. 

Indeed, that place was sacred from the beginning : long 
before the Achaeans landed upon this shore men prayed 
here to the genius of the place, and, sacrificing victims, 
propitiated the gods, those divinities still implicit in the 
beauty of such places as this. Legend ascribes the founda- 
tion of the temple to Hercules or Lacinius, or asserts that 
Thetis gave it to Hera, and that therefore in her honour the 
women of Crotona mourned there every year the death of 
her son Achilles ; while Virgil speaks of it as already in 
existence at the time of the voyage of iEneas. Every- 
thing indeed that we hear of it impresses us with its im- 
mense antiquity, while that solitary column of the Doric 
order that alone remains upon a vast and perhaps in part 
a Roman foundation is undoubtedly the oldest thing left 
to us in Magna Graecia, far older than anything we have 
at Poseidonia or Metapontum. 



198 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

It would seem that until the beginning of the sixteenth 
century this mighty Temple of Hera remained almost intact, 
its forty- eight columns still erect upholding the pediments 
and the roofs. But in the first years of that century the 
well-named Antonio Lucifero, Bishop of Cotrone, puUed it 
down to build with the broken materials his episcopal 
palace in the city. Even until the middle of the eighteenth 
century two columns remained and considerable parts of 
the pavement and the wall which formed the peribolos 
of the temple, but these were then carried off to mend or 
build the mole of the haven of Cotrone. To-day there is 
left to us only that solitary and mighty column looking 
over the sea. This great Doric column is 26J feet 
high,^ and has sixteen grooves ; it is thus somewhat 
smaller than the columns of the Temple of Neptune at 
Paestum, but is older than they, having been set up 
here at the end of the seventh century B.C. It is itself 
all that remains to us of the temple it supported : the 
masses of ruins some hundred yards away have nothing 
to do with it, though they may represent its dependences. 
The whole headland, of course, was a sanctuary dedicated 
to Hera, whose sacred flocks wandered and grazed in the 
valley which we call the Fossa del Lupo. The fa9ade of 
the temple faced towards the sea, eastward that is, looking 
to Greece. Within, at the end of the fifth century B.C., it 
was decorated at the expense of the Crotoniats by Zeuxis. 
" Crotona," says Cicero, " at that time when she was so 
famous and so rich that she was regarded as the happiest 
city in Italy, wished to decorate with paintings the Temple 
of Juno, which she especially held in veneration. Therefore 
she persuaded Zeuxis of Heracleia to come to Croton. And 
when he had painted several pictures, of which some 
remain to this day, the painter resolved to create an image 
of Helen, the model of perfect beauty. This greatly 
flattered the Crotoniats, who knew how excellent a painter 

^ 8 m, 29 high ; 5 m. 60 in its lower circumference, i m. 75 in 
its lower diameter. 



CROTONA 199 

of women was Zeuxis, so that they helped him in every 
way, thinking to enrich their temple with a masterpiece. 
Nor were they deceived. First Zeuxis demanded of them 
if they had any maidens remarkable for beauty. Thereupon 
they led him to the gymnasium, where he saw a crowd of 
youths of most noble and perfect beauty, for the Crotoniats 
were famous for strength and beauty of form and for their 
victories in the combats of the gymnasium. And when 
Zeuxis greatly admired these youths, the Crotoniats said, 
* We have their sisters, the maidens : these youths will 
give you some idea of their beauty.' ' Give me,' said 
Zeuxis, ' the most beautiful for my models.' . . . Then by 
a decree of the people of Crotona all the maidens were 
assembled and Zeuxis was bidden to choose. He chose 
five, whose names the poets have preserved for us. . . ." 

In such wise did the Crotoniats build and adorn the 
Temple of Hera which was so famous through the Greek 
world. There it stood for hundreds of years, the most 
venerable and the holiest place in all Magna Graecia, and 
perhaps the most beautiful. It was filled with a vast 
treasure. This it was which at last tempted Hannibal. 
At the end of the Second Punic War he had made Crotona 
his chief stronghold, and greatly in need of money to pay 
his mercenaries, at his wits' end to find it, he determined 
to loot the Temple of Hera Lacinia. In the midst of the 
sanctuary, before the statue of the Goddess, there stood a 
great votive column of solid gold. Its worth was reckoned 
in thousands of talents, and it represented the price of the 
wool of the sacred flocks during many centuries. This 
he determined to steal. But like a true Semite, before 
committing this appalUng sacrilege he wished to find out 
whether it was indeed worth the risk of steaHng. There- 
fore he had it bored to see if it was of solid gold. And 
when he found that it was so, he gave orders to have it 
carried away. But in the night as he slept Hera appeared 
to him and forbade the sacrilege, threatening him with 
blindness. Frightened by this dream, the Carthaginian 



200 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

revoked his orders, and with the gold produced by the boring 
he caused to be made a golden calf which he placed upon 
the column of gold, in honour of that goddess w^orshipped 
by the Carthaginians whom the Romans called Juno 
Coelestis, and there too he placed a great table of bronze 
upon which in Greek and in Phoenician he caused to be 
inscribed the account of his wars against the Romans that 
it might remain for ever : and this table Polybius saw 
and used in his History. 

It was not the barbarian Hannibal who began the de- 
struction of this marvellous sanctuary, but a Roman 
magistrate, one Q. Flavins Flaccus, who in 173 B.C., having 
founded in Rome the Temple of Fortuna Equestris, bore 
away the marble tiles of the unique roof of the Temple of 
Hera to adorn his own sanctuary in the Eternal City. 
This outrage was indeed condemned by the Senate, which 
caused the slabs to be carried back to this headland, but 
there was found no one able to replace them. Lenormant 
tells us that in the middle of the nineteenth century this 
great pile of tiles which the Romans could not replace upon 
the roof of the temple was discovered intact and ranged 
in order upon the ground close to the temple. 

Flavins Flaccus did not stand alone. In 36 B.C. Sextus 
Pompeius having been conquered by Agrippa and forced 
to abandon Sicily, hoped to continue the war in the East 
by piracy. Before setting out finally for Mitylene,- he 
descended upon Crotona and looted the temple, so that 
Strabo writing a generation later tells us that the temple 
had lost its wealth though it still itself remained, as indeed 
it would seem to have continued to do till the sixteenth 
century. Lenormant indeed asserts that it was with the 
advance of Christianity transformed into a church and 
dedicated in honour of the Madonna. There still indeed 
remains in the Cathedral of Croton a chapel in honour 
of La Madonna del Capo delle Colonne, while upon the 
headland itself there is a shrine of Our Lady to which 
it is said the maidens of Cotrone, le verginelle, go yearly in 



CROTONA 201 

procession with bare feet carrying flowers and singing as 
of old. I would that I might have seen them as they came 
by that steep way over the sea in the early sunlight, as they 
were the maidens of Crotona going in springtime to the 
Temple of Hera Lacinia. 



XV 

THE GULF OF TARANTO 

WE left Cotrone after all with a sort of reluctance to 
follow the coast by rail to Taranto,and first we passed 
along a low shore across which, amid a profusion of flowers, 
the iEsarus finds the sea, and then we crossed the Neaethus, 
the Neto of the Sila and of Theocritus, concerning which 
that poet sings in the rather dull Fourth Idyll where the 
shepherds Cory don and Battos speak of their pastures. 
Just across the wide bed of this stream, the greatest that 
descends from Sila into the Ionian Sea, is the station of 
Strongoli, the city lying some miles away on the hiUs 
inland toward the west. 

Strongoli is a wretched place enough, set on a bold 
height more than iioo feet high and some six miles from 
the shore. It stands right above the ancient city of 
Petelia, founded according to the Greek traditions by 
Philoctetes after the Trojan War. It would seem to have 
been always rather a fortress than a city, a small place 
really of the barbarians, who probably became almost 
completely Hellenized by the Crotoniats. Later it feU 
into the hands of the Lucanians and became the chiefest 
of their strongholds, so that Strabo calls it their metropolis. 
In the Second Punic War it played a considerable part, 
remaining entirely faithful to Rome amid the general 
disaffection ; but Rome was compelled to abandon it, 
and after a most heroic resistance the city fell into the 
hands of the Bruttian allies of Hannibal. Most of the 
inhabitants appear to have been massacred, but some 



THE GULF OF TARANTO 203 

few escaped, and these Rome restored and treated with 
such favour that PeteUa was soon a flourishing town, 
indeed in the first years of the Empire one of the most 
flourishing towns in this part of Italy. With the fall of 
the Empire in the West, Peteha apparently came to ruin, 
until Justinian restored it and built the fortress of 
Strongylos, as the Byzantines called it. The place like 
all the Byzantine foundations became an episcopal city, 
which however it no longer remains. But upon its old 
Cathedral certain inscriptions from Petelia are to be 
found, the only ruins left to us of the ancient city. 

From the station of Strongoli by the shore the railway 
follows the coast, crossing the Crimisso upon the low and 
open shore, and rounding the Punta delF Alice under 
Giro. This headland is the ancient promontory of 
Crimissa upon which, according to Greek tradition, Philoc- 
tetes founded a small city known by that name, no 
ruins of which are left to us, but the retreat from which 
is represented by the town of Giro. Like Petelia, Grimissa 
was probably an (Enotrian city, a barbarous town that 
was in the great years of Magna Grgecia completely 
Hellenized. 

Giro, which does not occupy the site of the ancient 
city, is not worth a visit except it be for the beauty of 
the Galabrian mountains and sea to be had thence. These 
mountains are the joy of Galabria to-day ; amid many 
disappointments they never disappoint us, for their beauty 
alone remains unchanged from the days of Pythagoras 
to our own. 

From th« Punta dell' Alice the railway passes through 
a country of considerable charm all along the shore, past 
Crucoli and its castle, exquisitely situated over the sea, 
across the river Fiumenica to Gariati, a place as miserable 
as Grucoli is delightful, and close to the shore. The line 
continues to follow the coast through a hill country full 
of beauty if rather sombre, until, crossing the Trionto, 
the ancient Traentus, it enters the vast and noble Gulf of 



204 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Taranto along the low and ever widening shore across 
which the famous Crathis reaches the sea upon which 
stood of old the great and illustrious city of Sybaris and 
the later foundation of Thurii. Before coming to these 
famous but now empty and desolate places, however, the 
railway passes under the beautiful town of Rossano, 
which is not only worth some trouble to see, but which 
boasts the best inn, poor though it be, in this part of the 
country, the only possible resting-place from which to 
visit the site of Sybaris. 

Rossano is a considerable town, so wonderfully situated 
upon a height surrounded by great precipices that coming 
to it one wonders how men ever chose so inaccessible a 
spot. It takes more than an hour to climb up to it from 
its borgo by the station where I suppose the ancient town 
of Roscianum to have stood, and every yard of the way 
is full of wonder. It can indeed only have been in the 
misery of the Lower Empire, when the whole of these 
coasts were open to the raids of the Saracens, that Rossano 
retreated to the marvellous eyrie upon which it lies, living 
by its quarries of marble and alabaster. In that time 
of confusion the first necessity of any strong place was 
natural strength and difficulty of access. This virtue 
certainly Rossano possessed, and thus it appears as one 
of the principal fortresses of the Byzantines in Southern 
Italy, itself impregnable and commanding the coast and 
the valley of the Crathis, the easiest route from the Ionian 
to the Tyrrhene Sea. The first we hear of it is that it 
fell to Totila in 548, but thereafter it appears as the 
southern key of all this country, a role it continued to 
play until late in the Middle Age. To this early import- 
ance the fact that it was and is the see of an archbishop 
bears witness, as does the strange career of its saint, the 
Byzantine S. Nilus, who was born in Rossano in 910, 
and of whom the town boasts to this day. Before the 
Byzantine Madonna which remains in the Cathedral he 
took his vows under the Basilian Rule, and he became 



SYBARIS 205 

abbot of S. Maria close by. His life was a long flight before 
the Saracen, 

The Byzantine Cathedral of S. Pietro, under its five 
domes, however, possesses a treasure even more precious 
than S. Nilus' Byzantine Madonna. This is a sixth-century 
manuscript of the Gospels of S. Matthew and S. Mark, 
written in silver upon purple leaves of vellum, with twelve 
full-page miniatures in gold and colours, a marvellous 
antiquity. Even this wonder is as nothing to the beauty 
of the world that lies before one from the terraces of 
Rossano, where mountains and sea and great headland, all 
the vast bay of Taranto and the peninsula of Otranto are 
spread out in the glory of the morning and evening light, 
never to be forgotten. 

From Rossano it is a fine morning's walk to Corigliano 
northward by a footpath over the hills which leaves the 
steep road to the sea about half-way down. Rising out 
of the olives stands a great castle, and beneath it the little 
town, almost as beautiful though less picturesque than its 
neighbour. Thence it is easy to descend to the railway and 
from the desolate station of Sybaris to visit the forgotten 
site of that great city. 

Nothing but the melancholy satisfaction of standing 
by the river beneath which lie the ruins of Sybaris is to be 
gained by a visit to this utterly desolate place, where not 
only Sybaris but Thurii once stood. There is nothing to 
see, not a stone remains of either Greek city, though at 
Thurii a few Roman ruins are still visible. Yet Sybaris 
was incomparably the greatest republic in Magna Grsecia, 
Poseidonia was but her colony. The power and splendour 
of Sybaris were so great that the name of her citizens has 
become a synonym for luxury, and in the height of her 
career in the sixth century B.C. she was easily the greatest 
and wealthiest city of the Greek world ; she ruled over 
twenty-five subject cities and could put an army of 300,000 
men into the field. Her own walls were not less than 
50 stadia in circumference, and her knights, those wealthy 



2o6 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

patricians who rode in her ceremonial processions, were 
not less than 5000. When one of her citizens sought to 
marry the daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon he carried 
with him in his train not less than 1000 slaves. Their 
luxury indeed was such that all dressed in silk, and such 
was their magnificence that Alcimenes of Sybaris offered 
to the Lacinian Hera a figured robe of purple which 
Dionysius of Syracuse stole and sold for 120 talents, 
;f24,ooo of our money. 

But in spite of their wealth, their power, their luxury 
and exquisite civilization, the Sybarites were destroyed, and 
this not by the barbarians but by their brothers of Crotona. 
Both were Achaean cities, but after years of friendship they 
quarrelled when Pythagoras began his mysterious revolu- 
tion. It seems that like Crotona, Sybaris had been 
governed till then by an aristocratic oligarchy, but this 
had been dispersed by a demagogue called Telys who made 
himself despot. The aristocrats took refuge in Crotona, 
and when Telys demanded them and was refused, he 
declared war upon Crotona, and, murdering her am- 
bassadors, marched against that city with an army of 
300,000 men. With 15,000 men under the command of 
Milo, Crotona met him upon the Traeis, and having annihi- 
lated his immense army, proceeded to destroy the city, 
turning the course of the Crathis so that it flowed over the 
ruins and for ever forbade any resurrection. This happened 
in 510 B.C. All attempts to rebuild the city were frustrated 
by the Crotoniats ; the Sybarites were forced to take 
refuge in Laus and Scidrus, colonies of theirs upon the 
Tyrrhene Sea. Half a century later a fresh attempt was 
made to re-establish Sybaris, but Croton would not permit 
it, and all that she would ever consent to was the foundation 
of Thurii by the Sybarites and certain Athenian colonists 
sent by Pericles. This was done about seventy years 
after the fall of Sybaris. The site of the new city was 
chosen upon rising ground to the south of the mouth of 
the Crathis ; but for some reason Thurii did not flourish : 



THE GULF OF TARANTO 207 

constant disputes arose between the Sybarites and the 
Athenians, until the former were expelled, their ultimate 
fate being unknown to us. Having got rid of the Sybarites, 
the Thurians made friends with the Crotoniats, and the 
new city rapidly increased in wealth and prosperity under 
a democratic government which seems to have welcomed 
every sort of immigrant. The wars of Dionysius and 
Pyrrhus left it greatly weakened, but it was the Second 
Punic War that destroyed it, for Hannibal gave it to be 
plundered by his troops. Later Rome sent it a colony, but 
it never rose again to its old prosperity, and with the 
fall of the Empire disappears altogether, even its site 
being to-day doubtful, and its name as utterly lost 
as that of Sybaris was till with the advent of the rail- 
way the new station in this desolate place was called 
Sibari. 

Leaving that melancholy station, the railway crosses 
the marshes of Sybaris, and proceeds through a delicious 
hill country between the mountains and the sea, crossing 
many a river, under Trebisaccie, Amendolara, Roseto, 
Rocca Imperiale, to the marshes of the Sinni, the ancient 
Syris, where the station of Nova Siri, a mere handful of 
houses, gives us access to the site of the ancient Greek 
cities of Siris and Heracleia. 

There is nothing more picturesque upon all this coast 
than Trebisaccie, Amendolara upon its isolated rock, and 
Roseto in its ravine, or Rocca Imperiale ; but their obvious 
wonder and delight does not occupy the mind as does the 
legendary beauty of Siris in the words of Athenaeus : '* There 
is no spot on earth so sweet, so lovely, so to be desired as 
the banks of that stream upon which Siris stands." The 
place is a marsh : nothing at all remains of that Ionian 
city founded perhaps in 700 B.C. ; not a stone is left of it, 
and scarcely a word in history — only that loving tribute 
of Athenaeus. The place early came to nothing ; it was 
destroyed before Sybaris fell, and thereafter would seem 
to have served Heracleia as a port. 



2o8 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Heracleia was founded by the Tarentines as an outpost 
against the Thurians and the Crotoniats in 432 B.C. After 
years of war the Tarentines were victorious, and they 
estabHshed this outpost of Heracleia, transferring there 
what was left of the population of Siris upon the headland 
that comes down from the mountains towards the sea 
between the rivers Acisis (Agis) and Siris (Sinni) . The two 
cities of Siris and Heracleia were indeed so bound together 
in their history that Pliny confounds them and Livy 
considers them as one. The history of Heracleia follows 
that of Tarentum, for it was her daughter till the Second 
Punic War, when upon the offer of extraordinary terms it 
deserted the cause of Hannibal for that of Rome, and 
throughout the time of the Republic continued to enjoy 
a very favourable position, so that it hesitated to accept 
the rights of Roman citizenship in 89 B.C. Later it seems 
to have sunk into decadence, and with the fall of the Empire 
it disappears, and its site appears to have become desolate. 
All along this coast, with three exceptions, Reggio, Cotrone, 
and Taranto, the cities upon the sea were deserted because 
they could not be defended against the malaria and the 
raids of the Saracens. It was doubtless the same causes 
which made Heracleia a desert. The wretched village of 
Policoro would seem to-day to occupy the site of this 
outpost of Tarentum. 

Between Sybaris and Tarentum there is only a sort 
of desolation. The coast here is a low swamp, and the 
only place of any importance is the railway junction, little 
more than a station, of Metaponto, rather nearer Heracleia 
than Tarentum, in the deepest part of the gulf. Alighting 
there to-day and crossing the neglected fields in search 
of the ruins of the great and famous city which once stood 
here by the sea, none would guess that this place was 
once so fertile, and especially in corn, that the Metapontines 
sent to the temple at Delphi an offering of a '* golden 
sheaf," O€po<s xP^a-ovu, and used an ear of com upon 
their coins as the symbol of their city. To-day the country 



METAPONTUM 209 

is wholly desolate, the only village being that of Torremare 
by the station. 

It is across a melancholy waste, utterly lonely and silent, 
that one makes one's way north-east, at first by a road 
and then by a sort of track, to the Tavola de' Paladini, 
expecting a wonder. Of all the ruins in Magna Graecia 
these, I think, are the most disappointing ; not that 
there is little or nothing to see ; on the contrary, fifteen 
^ fluted columns of a Doric temple with their architrave 
still stand amid this melancholy desolation ; but that they 
have been surrounded in our time by a high wall, so that 
they*are invisible from afar and cannot properly be seen 
at all ; and this for no cause whatever, for the gate in 
this wall is always open. The long and dreary walk thus 
would not be worth taking, but that every stone of that 
lost civilization is worthy of homage from us who owe so 
much to it. For this reason alone it is worth while upon 
retracing one's steps towards the station to turn out of the 
way by a road upon the left to see the Chiesa di Sansone, 
where are the prostrate ruins of another temple two and a 
half miles at least from the Tavola de' Paladini, while a 
mile south-east beyond the railway line near the shore is 
the Lagone di S. Pelagina, the ancient port of Metaponto. 
Can it be that all these were part of one city ? It might 
seem likely enough when we remember the wealth and im- 
portance of Metapontum, which, founded twenty-four miles 
from Tarentum by an Achaean people, and on the frontier 
of that Spartan colony, for years held its own as an Achaean 
outpost against Tarentum. That it grew and increased in 
size and wealth we know, as well as that it welcomed the 
doctrines of Pythagoras, offering a refuge to that great 
man himself when he was expelled from Crotona. Indeed, 
he died in Metapontum ; his house there was consecrated 
as a temple, and his tomb was still venerated even in the 
days of Cicero. Nor was Pythagoras the only hero who 
there found a last resting-place. For it was to Metapontum 
they bore the body of Alexander of Epirus after his defeat 
14 



210 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

and death at Pandosia in 326 B.C. By this time, indeed, 
Metapontum and Tarentum were aUies against the Lucanian 
barbarians. Together they welcomed Pyrrhus, as later 
they encouraged Hannibal. This indeed seems to have 
cost Metapontum her life ; for when Hannibal was forced 
to evacuate the city he removed all the inhabitants lest 
they should fall into the hands of Rome, and from that 
time we hear no more of Metapontum, save from Pausanias, 
who tells us that in his day it was a heap of ruins. 

With the fall of the city, its utter desertion or decay, 
the land went out of cultivation, agriculture perished, the 
rivers silted up, and the malaria appeared. It was probably 
as much in fear of the malaria as to escape the Saracen 
raids that the coast cities along the shore with but two 
exceptions, Croton and Tarentum, were deserted, and are 
still represented as they were throughout the Dark and 
Middle Ages by those curious towns huddled among pre- 
cipices upon the heights. It was a retreat from death by 
fever as well as from death by raid. We see this indeed 
if we consider that it is now many years since any sort of 
violence was possible upon this coast, and yet it is only 
now when efforts are being made with the advent of the 
railway to deal with the malaria, and not altogether un- 
successfully, that the people are, though slowly, returning 
to the coast from the heights. 



XVI 

TARANTO 

TARANTO is in many ways the most remarkable 
city left to us in all Magna Grsecia. To begin 
with, it is by far the most living, as it is by far the most 
healthy, and something of its old power and importance 
seem again to be within its grasp with the great develop- 
ment of the naval strength of modem Italy. 

The success and the continuance of Taranto are due 
entirely to its situation, which is as astonishing as it is 
fortunate. Coming into the place to-day out of the 
melancholy plains of Metapontum one finds the city set 
upon a now insulated peninsula, a long, low headland 
thrust across a deep bay, and only separated eastward 
and westward from the mainland by the narrowest of 
channels. The ancient city spread itself out over the 
mainland eastward, its acropolis alone occupying the 
peninsula, which is now an island. The mediaeval city 
was confined to the site of the acropolis alone, but to-day 
Taranto is spreading out again over all its ancient site, 
which indeed it presently bids fair to overflow. The 
remarkable fact about the situation of the town is that 
the peninsula upon which it stands is thrust not directly 
seaward, but across the bay, which it all but completely 
encloses. The place thus boasts of two seas or ports, 
an outer and an inner, known as the Mare Grande and 
the Mare Piccolo, the former offering an excellent road- 
stead, the latter the finest natural harbour upon all this 
coast, indeed in all Southern Italy. These harbours upon 



212 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

a harbourless coast alone might serve to explain the 
continuous life of Taranto, its persistence when every 
other Greek city upon the Ionian Sea, save Crotona, was 
utterly ruined, and even Crotona had become a mere 
derelict. But they are not enough to explain the con- 
tinuous life of the place if, as has always been asserted, 
the final destruction of the cities of Magna Grsecia was 
due to the appalling raids of the Saracens, from which 
the strong, but unattractive situation, of Crotona crouched 
under its uplifted citadel alone saved it. Here certainly 
in Taranto was a city whose enormous natural advantages 
would have attracted so intelligent an enemy as the 
Oriental, from whom it would seem nature had done little 
to protect it. It is true that the city of the Dark Age 
was grouped altogether upon the long and narrow 
peninsula which could certainly be defended by a few 
men, but this like the great natural strength of Crotona 
would have availed it little, but for the fact that since 
it was almost surrounded by the sea it was therefore not 
at the mercy of the malaria as were Locri, Sybaris, and 
Metapontum. That was the real enemy that appeared 
with the failure of the Roman administration ; and it 
was an invincible foe. Not the Saracens but the malaria 
ruined the cities upon this coast and drove the people 
inland on to the windy and healthy heights ; and because 
Taranto and the sea-girt rock of Crotona were compara- 
tively free from this pestilence, they endured when every 
other place upon this shore was deserted. 

Thus it is that the success and continuance of Taranto 
are due entirely to its situation. 

What this is appears at once on emerging from the 
railway station upon the mainland to the west of the 
town. Before one, across the canal of the Porta Napoli, 
the city lies huddled together upon its island-peninsula, 
house joined to house, shining, glittering, dazzling in the 
sun. From end to end of it runs the'narrow Via Maggiore, 
in the midst of which upon the highest part of the island- 



TARANTO 213 

peninsula, closely surrounded by houses, stands the 
Cathedral of S. Cataldo. To the south, looking over the 
Mare Grande where in the offing rise the two islets of 
S. Peter and S. Paul, the Choerades of the ancients, the 
escarpment is very steep ; to the north the city slopes 
gradually down to the Mare Piccolo, along the shore of 
which parallel with, but much lower than, the Via 
Maggiore runs the newly named Via Garibaldi, the old 
fisherrnen's quarter, the most picturesque part of the 
city, really a quay lined with fishing boats, for this Mare 
Piccolo has always been famous for its multitude of fish. 
Upon the south-east corner of the island-peninsula over 
the Mare Grande, guarding the Canal Navigabile between 
the two seas, a passage cut by Ferdinand i of Aragon, 
stands the huge Castello built by Charles v. Behind 
this, along the top of the steep southern escarpment, 
looking over the Mare Grande, runs the new Corso Vittorio 
Emanuele, a splendid boulevard, parallel with the Via 
Maggiore and the Via Garibaldi. 

Astonishing and even splendid as the situation of 
Taranto thus is, no one, I think, has ever entered this 
shining city without disappointment. Remembering its 
great history one expects much ; in fact, almost nothing 
remains of ancient Tarentum and very little of the Tar- 
anto of the Middle Age. But one ruin reminds us of all 
the buildings of antiquity, and as for the equally lonely 
monument of the Middle Age, the Cathedral, it has been 
so outrageously modernized, to quote the words of 
Lenormant, that save for its ancient columns it is not worth 
a visit. Indeed, but for these and the fragments collected 
in the Museum, the best of which are two fine marble 
heads, one of which dates from the end of the fifth 
century B.C., Taranto is wholly bereft of works of art. 
Nevertheless its picturesque, eastern aspect, its narrow 
streets, above all, its fishermen's quarter along the Mare 
Piccolo, give it a certain delight, while its long, long history 
must always attract the scholar. 



214 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Tarentum gets its name from the river Taras, which 
of old flowed into the sea to the west of the city. With 
regard to the name of this river, local legends have always 
asserted that the earliest settlement here was that estab- 
lished by a Cretan colony. 

It is said the lapyx with Saturia, the daughter of Minos, 
set out from Crete for Italy, and came safely to shore here 
in the Gulf of Tarentum. lapyx founded the nation 
of the lapygians, but Saturia was seized by Poseidon, by 
whom she had a son, Taras, who thus becomes the legendary 
founder of Tarentum. It is probable that some basis of 
truth lies beneath this legend ; but the historic foundation 
of the city was due not to the Cretans but to the Spartans, 
and befell in the year 707 B.C. 

It seems that the new generation, bom and educated 
at Sparta during the absence of the Spartan men at the 
first Messenian War, were, though recognized by the laws 
of Lycurgus as legitimate, having the rights of citizens, 
in truth the children bom of illegitimate unions con- 
tracted by the Spartan women during the absence of their 
husbands. In spite of their legal claim to recognition as 
citizens these youths and maidens were treated with con- 
tempt by the returned warriors, and after a vain attempt 
to assert their rights they determined to set out in a body 
under their leader, Phalanthus, to found a new city for them- 
selves, and after consulting the Oracle at Delphi they came to 
the Italian shore and, according to some, were well received 
by the natives, though others, and especially Pausanias, 
assert that they found there a great powerful city into which 
they made their way only after a long and bloody struggle. 
It would seem to be impossible to decide between these 
opposite stories, and indeed we know almost nothing of the 
early history of Tarentum, save that like Sybaris and 
Crotona it quickly became both rich and powerful. This 
success it must have owed altogether to its situation, to 
its harbour, the only good port on all this southern coast, 
and the wealth of the Mare Piccolo, which abounded in 



TARANTO 215 

shell-fish of all sorts, and especially in the murex from which 
was obtained the famous purple dye, for which Tarentum 
soon became noted. 

Whether or no the Tarentines established themselves 
upon this coast without quarrelling with the natives, they 
were soon at war with them, and for the most part success- 
fully, it would seem, till in 473 B.C. in facing the lapygians 
they, with an auxiliary force of 3000 Rhegians, were utterly 
defeated by the barbarians with very great slaughter ; 
indeed, Herodotus asserts that they suffered the greatest 
defeat of his time. This appalling disaster was apparently 
followed by a revolution in which the aristocratic govern- 
ment fell, and was followed by a democracy. It is curious 
that this result was obtained in Tarentum about the same 
time as in the other great cities of Magna Grascia, though 
not apparently from the same cause. In Croton and 
Sybaris the democratic reaction had followed upon the 
establishment of the aristocratic doctrines of Pythagoras ; 
but that mystic philosopher would seem to have had little 
influence in Tarentum, where the democratic revolution 
was brought about by a defeat in war of the aristocratic 
government. 

This defeat and revolution are the first events in the 
history of Tarentum to which we can definitely assign a 
date. They occurred more than two hundred years after 
the foundation of the city, and a full generation after the 
destruction of Sybaris. Tarentum, indeed, was till then 
utterly overshadowed by the enormous wealth and power 
of the two great Achaean cities to the south, and it was only 
now that it began to assume a predominant position in 
Magna Graecia. 

For the defeat of the Tarentines would seem to have been 
the beginning of their great prosperity. Perhaps the 
destruction of Sybaris — and what that meant to Magna 
Graecia has never been fully understood — gave them their 
opportunity. At any rate, it is now that they begin to play 
a great part in the affairs of their neighbours. They first 



2i6 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

avenged their defeat upon the lapygians, sacking the city 
of Carbona (Carovigno), putting the men to the sword, and 
outraging the women upon the altars of the gods ; and as an 
expiation of their excesses dedicated at Delphi the famous 
horses of bronze, the work of Ageadas of Argos. Thus all 
the peninsula of lapygia came into their power. Then 
they turned to Magna Grsecia, and seeing the city of 
Thurii established by the Athenians to take the place of 
Sybaris, and fearing that the new city would ally itself with 
the Achaeans of Metapontum, they decided to seize the 
territory of Siris, between the two cities, and to establish 
there a fortress to hold all their foes both among the Greeks 
and the barbarians in check. This new colony was 
Heracleia, founded in 432 B.C. This was the beginning 
of the great power of Tarentum. Their remote position 
eastward saved them from many of the dangers that the 
other cities of Magna Grsecia had to face, such as the 
incursion of Dionysius of Syracuse, and doubtless the 
destruction and humiliation of the more southern cities by 
this tyrant tended to increase the relative power of 
Tarentum, which was out of his reach. The Tarentines, 
indeed, at first refused to join the Greek confederation 
against him, and when at last they were persuaded the 
congress at which their decision was taken was held at 
Heracleia, a fairly clear acknowledgment of the position 
they had come to hold in Magna Graecia. Their consent 
was won, in truth, by the necessity of action against the 
Lucanians. They were now the leading power in Magna 
Graecia, the very existence of which was threatened by these 
barbarians. Nor were they content to lead the already 
broken Greek cities against this common foe ; they appealed 
for aid to their mother city, Sparta, whose King Archi- 
demus came to their assistance with a very considerable 
force, landing in Italy in 346 B.C., and fighting apparently 
for some eight years, to be defeated and killed in battle 
with the barbarians at Manduria in 338 B.C., when almost 
his whole force perished with him. 



TARANTO 217 

Then it was that the Tarentines invited Alexander, 
King of Epirus, to assist them. Six years later, in 332 B.C., 
he landed at Tarentum, broke the lapygians, and turning 
then upon the Lucanians defeated those barbarians and 
their Samnite allies near Paestum. But he had by then 
quarrelled with the Tarentines, so that from Psestum 
he returned and seized their colony of Heracleia. In 
326 B.C. he died, and the Tarentines were soon compelled 
to look for another champion. They appealed again to 
Sparta, who sent them Cleonymus, the uncle of the king, 
with a large army ; but though Cleonymus seems to have 
been victorious, his arrogance and luxury soon alienated 
his allies, and he quitted Italy without having achieved 
anything definite. 

But already before this Tarentum had seen upon the 
northern horizon a more formidable shadow than that cast 
by the barbarians — the shadow of Rome. In the year 
303 B.C., the year in which she invoked the aid of Sparta 
for the last time, Tarentum had after many threats 
unfulfilled consented to conclude a treaty with Rome, in 
which it was agreed that no Roman ship of war should pass 
northward of the Lacinian peninsula. A year had not 
passed away before this treaty was broken by Rome. In 
302 B.C. a Roman squadron of not less than ten ships, 
which had been sent under Lucius Cornelius to the assist- 
ance of Thurii, hard pressed by the Lucanians, appeared in 
the Tarentine Gulf, and even sailed with a studied insolence 
within sight of the city. These ships were immediately 
attacked by the Tarentine fleet ; one was taken and four 
sunk, and the remaining five sailed away to tell the tale 
in Rome. Meanwhile the Tarentines attacked Thurii for 
having called in Roman assistance, and took the city. 
Rome immediately sent an embassy to Tarentum, whose 
demands were refused with contempt, and Rome, half- 
heartedly, declared war upon the Greek city. In reply, 
Tarentum called Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, into Italy, 
who at once sent an army of 3000 men to occupy the citadel 



2i8 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

of Tarentum, whither he himself shortly after arrived. 
The war opened in the spring, and as we know was at 
first wholly successful, but Rome at last roused herself, and 
having finally driven Pyrrhus out of Italy descended upon 
Tarentum, still held by a Pyrrhic garrison. The city was 
in two minds as to its course of action. One party was for 
surrender, the other appealed to Carthage for assistance. 
A Carthaginian fleet, indeed, was sent, and sailed into the 
bay just too late, for Rome was in possession, the Pyrrhic 
garrison having been forced by the majority to surrender 
the city. 

Thus Tarentum came into the power of Rome, its citadel 
being occupied by a Roman garrison. The citizens, indeed, 
enjoyed a virtual independence, but they were compelled 
to furnish ships against the Carthaginians in the First 
Punic War, in which otherwise they played no part. Rome, 
however, kept a watchful eyeupon Tarentum, and had begun 
to develop the port of Brundusium, the terminus of the 
Via Appia, before the end of the war ; and as this was 
achieved she again began to oppress Tarentum. 

With the disastrous procession of Carthaginian victories 
in the Second Punic War Tarentum, however, again gradu- 
ally became of very great importance. But nothing 
could have induced her to side with Carthage — indeed, as 
we have seen, she had given herself to Rome rather than 
admit the Carthaginians — had not Rome, who had de- 
manded and obtained hostages from aU the Greek cities 
since the beginning of the war, committed an act of the 
utmost barbarity against her. It seems that these host- 
ages, which so far as Tarentum was concerned consisted 
of thirteen young men of the noblest families of the city, 
attempted to escape, and on being retaken were flogged 
and thrown headlong from the Tarpeian rock. When 
this news reached Tarentum, Hannibal, who had captured 
many Tarentines at Cannae and released them, was en- 
camped upon the Galesus. In their rage the Tarentines 
agreed with him, and one day throwing themselves upon 



TARANTO 219 

the Roman garrison opened their gates and admitted the 
Carthaginians. Marcus Livius, with the greater part of 
the Roman garrison, found refuge in the citadel, which 
he contrived to hold. 

Hannibal thus found himself in possession of a much- 
needed port from which he could communicate with 
Carthage, and into which he could receive reinforcements. 
He attempted to storm the citadel, but without success ; 
therefore he blockaded it with earth -works upon the 
landward side, without demobilizing his army, thus pro- 
tecting the city, and wishing to use the Tarentine ships 
in the Mare Piccolo, the passage from which to the outer 
sea the citadel commanded, he even dragged them across 
the isthmus which, as I have said, Ferdinand of Aragon cut 
through when he made the Canal Navigabile. 

Tarentum remained thus in the possession of Hannibal, 
its citadel in the hands of a besieged Roman garrison, for 
three years, the Tarentine fleet meantime doing great 
damage to the Romans ; but in 209 B.C., when the fall of 
Capua had definitely ruined Hannibal, Fabius Cunctator 
crowned his glorious career by retaking Tarentum. Fear- 
ful excesses were committed by the exasperated Romans 
upon this occasion. They massacred everyone they could 
find, pillaged, burnt, and raped, and sold at last no less 
than 30,000 Tarentines into slavery. Hannibal arrived to 
relieve the city too late, and retired upon Metapontum. 

When all this was done, and the spoil of Tarentum 
amounted to no less than 730,000 pounds sterling of our 
money, the city was left in utter decay, though it remained 
the chief city of this ruined part of Italy. In 123 B.C. 
it was proposed to revive it, and to this end Rome sent a 
colony to Tarentum, which apparently she had renamed 
Colonia Neptunia. The city appears to have re-arisen upon 
the site of its ancient acropolis, that is to say upon the 
island; its situation, indeed, saved it from death, and 
throughout the Empire it appears as a seaport of considerable 
importance,keeping too, like Neapolis and perhaps Rhegium, 



220 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

its Greek tongue and civilization. Nor does it appear less 
important in the Dark Age, when Belisarius disputed it 
with Totila, as did Narses after him, and with more success, 
so that it remained subject to the Byzantine Empire 
till the middle of the seventh century, when Lombard, 
Saracen, and Greek continually fought for it, the Greeks 
possessing it most often. From them it finally passed to 
Robert Guiscard in 1063, to form ever after a part of the 
Neapolitan kingdom. 

Little or nothing remains to-day of the ancient city, 
for, as Strabo tells us, " the greater part of the splendid 
monuments which adorned the Acropolis in ancient times 
were either destroyed by the Carthaginians when they 
took the city or carried off as booty by the Romans when 
they made themselves masters of it by assault ; among 
other treasures they carried off the colossal bronze statue 
of Hercules, a work of Lysippus, now in the Capitol, 
dedicated there as an offering by Fabius." Indeed, the 
only remnant of the ancient city which remains to us is the 
upper part of two huge columns of a Doric temple, perhaps 
of Poseidon, near the eastern end of the Via Maggiore, 
while over the Porta di Napoli bridge runs II Triglio, an 
aqueduct, which would seem to date from Byzantine 
times. 

It is not in any building that we shall to-day find a 
hint of Tarentum of old, but rather in the amazing life 
of the fishermen's quarter, the crowded Via Garibaldi, the 
staked and populous Mare Piccolo, which for all its torpedo 
boats and great naval quays remains what it has been 
for three thousand years. Beside this inland sea, some 
six miles long by three miles broad, one may wander for 
hours, talking with the fishermen, or rather trying to under- 
stand their curious half- Greek dialect, or in the market 
where, amid the myriad sorts of fish exposed for sale, one 
tries to recognize those one has seen upon the ancient coins 
of the city, or to find that silk-bearing shell-fish which Pliny 
calls pernilegum, but the Tarentines of to-day pemuetico, 



TARANTO 221 

best of all perhaps in wandering, as how many have done, 
in search of the Galaesus which flowed into the Mare 
Piccolo upon the north and used, according to Virgil, to soak 
the golden fields where now no fields are golden perhaps 
any more for ever and no such river runs. 

The Galaesus must surely have flowed close to S. Maria 
di Galeso, but the stream there to-day, a mere swamp, 
cannot surely be that of which Horace sang — '' The stream 
of Galsesus dear to the skin-clad sheep and to the fields 
that once were ruled by Phalanthus the Laconian king " ? 

And yet it is even so. Here at Taranto, the last city 
of Magna Grsecia, let us confess the appalling change 
this whole country must have suffered from earthquake 
and neglect since classic times. Everywhere it is a prey to 
malaria, because it has so long lacked a population which 
may pursue the art of agriculture in peace ; everywhere, 
save for its noble outlines, its mountains and its sea, it is a 
bitter disappointment to *' those few fantastics who hold 
a memory of the ancient world dearer than any mechanic 
triumph of to-day." Magna Grsecia is not here, but in our 
hearts ; it is in memory of a vanished world I recall here 
the beautiful verses in praise of this beloved country : 
" Dear to me beyond all other retreats . . ." 

I lie terrarum mihi praeter omnes 
angulus ridet, ubi non Hymetto 
mella decedunt viridique certat 
baca Venafro 

Ver ubi longum tepidasque praebet 
luppiter brumas, et amicus Aulon 
fertili Baccho minimuin Falernis 
invidet uvis . . .^ 

^ Dear to me beyond all other retreats is that comer of the world 
where the honey ^delds not to Mount Hymettus, and the olive berry 
vies with green venafrum ; where Jove grants lingering spring and 
winters mild ; and Anion's slope, friendly to fruitful Bacchus, envies 
not a whit the grapes of Falernum. 



XVII 

TERRA D'OTRANTO 

THE railway out of Taranto toward Brindisi passes 
at first along the northern shore of the Mare Piccolo, 
and crossing the low hills soon comes into a country of far- 
stretching plains and vast, low, rolling hills, the true Apulian 
landscape as different as anything can be from the wild 
romantic mountain country of Calabria and Basilicata, 
of which, though we had entered the province of Apulia 
on leaving Metaponto and crossing the Bradano, we had 
till now had no hint. This Apulia is a land of vast pastures 
and cornfields and olive gardens, islanded with many rich 
cities, notable if only for the splendour of their churches, 
though these are not perhaps so fine in this southern corner 
of the province as farther north. Indeed, in spite of 
the landscape that greets you on crossing the Tarantine 
hills, this southern comer, wholly peninsula in character as 
it is, is not really Apulia at all, but rather lapygia, as 
the Greeks called it, or, as the Romans said, Calabria, for 
they called the heel of Italy by that name which we give 
to the toe. So much for names. 

The first city you reach in this great rolling country 
on coming out of Taranto by train is Francavilla, an 
Angevin foundation without much interest ; but the second 
is Oria, a very ancient place, the old capital of the Messa- 
pians, who gave the Tarantines so much trouble. It is 
most beautifully placed upon the low hillside under a 
vast thirteenth-century Castle, built by the Emperor 



TERRA D'OTRANTO 223 

Frederick 11, whose country, indeed, Apulia more especially 
is, for he particularly rejoiced in it. 

The chief interest in Oria lies indeed in this great Castle 
which the Emperor built to occupy the entire summit of 
the two hills upon which the city stands. This great 
fortress is triangular in shape, having one huge square 
tower at the apex, and two round towers at the angles of the 
base. Between these towers enclosing the great triangular 
space are double walls having forty-five torricelle, and all 
about is a garden of pines, laurels, cypresses, agaves, and 
eucalyptus, roses, and all manner of flowers. A curious 
legend illustrating the brutal cruelty of the overpraised 
Frederick, a hero, for the Protestant historians, only be- 
cause he was an enemy of the Pope, half a Mohammedan 
and half an infidel. It seems that in building the walls 
it was found that owing to the fact that they were set 
about the hill-top they continually crumbled, until some- 
one suggested that if a living child were built up within 
them they would stand firm enough. The son of a widow, 
it seems, was chosen, and we have a picture of the frantic 
mother rushing about the city demanding of all and sundry 
her little one. Learning the truth from an eye-witness, 
she dies of grief and horror, exclaiming : *' O mura crudeli, 
come arde e fuma per dolore il mio cuore, possa cosi Oria 
fumar per sempre," and the peasants still point out to 
you how at nightfall the city is lost in vapour, the rising 
mist from the plain, the heat mist from either sea. 

Little else is to be seen in Oria, though it boasts of many 
a fine palace, a Cathedral in which are certain frescoes, and 
a small museum of vases, arms, and bronzes of the Greek 
time in the Palazzo degli Uffici. But not far away to the 
south lies the city of Manduria, and this, together with the 
Castle of Frederick at Oria, makes it worth while to linger. 

This most Oriental-looking city, which the Middle Age 
named Casalnuovo, is as old as anything in Southern Italy, 
still boasting indeed the ruins of its ancient Messapian 
walls, which in parts remain some six feet high. They are 



224 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

built of huge rectangular blocks of the porous stone which 
abounds here, and originally formed a double circuit 
about the city with a broad street between and a ditch 
upon the outer side. Close by, in a vast cavern, is the 
well spoken of by Pliny, whose waters, however much be 
taken from or added to them, always remain at the same 
height. The present town does not, as is fairly obvious, 
occupy the site of the ancient city which was destroyed 
by the Saracens. The few inhabitants that escaped 
this disaster settled close by the old city at a place they 
called Casalnuovo. This settlement presently grew into 
the city we see, which by royal licence in the eighteenth 
century assumed the name of the ancient city, its mother, 
under whose walls it will be remembered Archidamus, 
King of Sparta, whom the Tarentines had invited into 
Italy to assist them against the Messapians, was defeated 
and slain in 338 B.C. 

The fine Cathedral of Casalnuovo has a beautiful rose 
window and an elaborately beautiful campanile adorned 
with two splendid heads of Greek workmanship found in the 
ancient city. In the Chiesa della Madonna delle Grazie 
here, is the entrance to a curious subterranean passage, 
perhaps a catacomb, and just outside the city on the way 
to the Cappuccini is the Chiesa di S. Pietro Mandurino, 
where in a curious underground chapel deep in the earth 
are some traces of very ancient frescoes. 

From Manduria one goes direct by train to Lecce, 
undoubtedly one of the most charming and beautiful 
towns in Southern Italy. " The Florence of Apulia," 
Gregorovius calls it, and with reason, for not only is it full 
of interesting churches and works of art, but in its intelli- 
gence, civilization, and hospitality it resembles that fairest 
city on the Arno without which Italy would be, how much 
less herself than she is. 

Lecce is indeed to lapygia, the Terra d'Otranto, what 
Florence is to Tuscany, its capital, summing up all its 
delight, a beautiful city, cool and quiet, set in the midst of 



LECCE 225 

gardens and orchards some eight miles from the Adriatic, 
where stands the port of Lecce, Castello di S. Cataldo. 

It is a Uttle difficult to explain the capital importance of 
this town, which is set eight miles from the coast and its in- 
ferior port, more than twenty miles north of Otranto upon 
the Adriatic, and Gallipoli upon the Ionian Sea, and about as 
far south of Brindisi and east of Taranto. It probably owes 
its importance to the fact that it is thus equally distant from 
these four important places, and also to the general geo- 
graphy of this part of Italy. A great town was bound to 
spring up where the long peninsula of the heel of Italy, 
lapygia, the Terra d' Otranto, joined the mainland, and 
more especially as on either side of that mainland lay a 
widely different sea and coast, each with a history and 
destiny of its own. 

Its vast antiquity cannot be doubted : it was a Salentine 
city, and so far as we know was never settled by the 
Greeks. When Rome came down into the South, she at 
once saw the strategical and economic importance of the 
city, and though we hear but little of Lupiae, as Lecce 
was called, it was certainly a Roman municipal town of 
considerable wealth, and this the very fine Roman amphi- 
theatre in the Piazza S. Oronzo now being excavated 
fully confirms us in believing. This vast building had a 
major axis of 102 metres, that of the arena itself being 52, 
and was larger than the amphitheatre at Nimes, though 
not so large as that at Aries. 

Christianity is said to have been brought to Lecce by that 
Justus of Corinth in whose house S. Paul dwelt, " hard by 
the synagogue." ^ This man was sent to Rome by the 
Apostle, and taking ship landed at Otranto, and came on 
to Lecce, where he abode in the house of a certain Publius 
Orontius, whom he baptized with his whole family, and 
whom, later, S. Paul made first Bishop of Lecce, giving him 
Justus for his priest. Both were martyred in the time of 
Nero. Thus S. Oronzo and S. Justus becapae patrgns of the 

^ Acts xviii. 7.. 

15 



226 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

city of Lecce, and are commemorated in the names of 
her churches and piazzas ; but the fame of both is over- 
shadowed by that of the Irish S. Cataldo, who at the be- 
ginning of the second century, on his way back from the 
Holy Land, visited Taranto, and remained there to become 
first bishop and then patron saint of the city. 

With the failure of the Roman administration, Lecce 
like every other city in Southern Italy fell into a sort of 
decay, was disputed by Goths and Byzantines and Lombards 
and Saracens, and in the eleventh century was taken by 
the Normans, who were presently acknowledged as vassals 
of the Holy See, the brother of Robert Guiscard, Godfrey, 
becoming the first Count of Lecce in 1055. His twin 
nephews, Roger and Bohemund, presently quarrelled, but 
at last combined their affairs and divided the territory 
of their uncle between them : Bohemund took the title 
of Prince of Taranto, and obtained that city, Oria, Otranto, 
and Gallipoli, while Roger, Count of Lecce, took the rest, 
with Lecce for his capital and that of his successors. These, 
and especially Tancred, fifth Count of Lecce and King 
of Sicily, doubtless built much in Lecce, but there is 
left but one building of their time within or without the 
city. 

This, a noble and lovely thing, is the great church of 
SS. Niccolo e Cataldo, outside the Porta di Napoli, built 
by Tancred himself before he became King of Sicily in 
1 180. It is to-day surrounded by the Campo Santo of 
the city, a garden of flowers set about with dark cypresses. 
There, over the wonderful doorway now set in a monstrous 
baroque fagade, a work of 1710 of the Olivetani monks, 
who came into possession of the church at the end 
of the fifteenth century, we read the following in- 
scription : — 

Hac in came sita quia labitur irrita vita 
Consula dives ita ne sit pro carne sopita 
Vita Tancredus Comes eternum sibi fedus 
Firmat in his donis ditans hec Templa colonus. 



LECCE 227 

Over the door into the cloister we read — 

Anno milleno centeno bis quadrageno 
Quo patuit mundo Christus sub rege secundo 
Guillelmo magnus comito Tancredus et agnus 
Nomine quern legit Nicolai Templa peregit. 

The monastery of which this church was the sanctuary 
was founded by Tancred for the Cluniac Order. It is 
indeed a Burgundian church " in a shell of Byzantine- 
Apulian architecture," the cupola being a most astonishing 
and lovely work, without a rival in all Italy. 

Apart from this very noble church, nothing remains to 
us in Lecce of the great Norman times, and practically 
nothing either of the Brienne Counts who succeeded them. 
What indeed we find in Lecce to-day, as we pass up and 
down its gay streets and in and out of its numerous churches, 
lingering in its piazzas or wondering at its fine palaces, 
is a baroque city of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eigh- 
teenth centuries, and it is this above all which gives it 
its interest for us. Nowhere else in Italy can you see this 
strange art, beautiful for all its lack of simplicity, its 
amazing restlessness, so unmixed with earlier and nobler 
forms, so completely itself, so unhampered by a greater 
glory. 

The best monument, though no longer a material one 
of the Brienne Counts, and more especially of the famous 
Walter of Brienne, Count of Lecce, Duke of Athens, and 
for a time Lord of Florence, is the Celestine convent by 
the Giardino Pubblico, now the Prefettura, founded in 
1353 by Walter under the dedication of S. Maria deir 
Annunziata e S. Leonardo. Walter de Brienne's buildings 
were demolished in 1539 by Charles v, and ten years 
later church and convent were begun anew, though they 
were not finished in 1582, when the church was consecrated. 
In 1811 the convent was desecrated, and in 1814 the church 
was abandoned and plundered, to be later restored and 
altogether spoiled. The best thing here that remains to 
us of the seventeenth-century building might seem to be 



228 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

the amazing baroque fagade, with its magnificent rose 
windows, its wonderful statuary and carving, and its 
appalhng general design. 

Another and for all its incompleteness a better fagade 
of the same baroque style is to be found before the church 
of S. Chiara, at the corner of the Piazza Vittorio Emanuele, 
dating from the end of the seventeenth century. Close by, 
at the end of the Via Ascaneo Grande, stands the Duomo, 
the Seminary, and the Vescovado, about the Piazza del 
Duomo. The Duomo, as we see it, dates for the most part 
from 1 66 1, but the Cathedral of Lecce was first built upon 
this site by the Normans in 1144. This first church was, 
however, rebuilt in the thirteenth century, and according 
to Ughelli was a very splendid affair. It was, nevertheless, 
destroyed in 1658, and that we see immediately begun, 
to be consecrated in 1767. It is dedicated, like its pre- 
decessor, to S. Oronzo. The campanile dates too from 
1661. The whole group of buildings has a noble if cold 
effect, and chimes very well with the baroque note of 
the city. 

The most interesting piazza, however, in Lecce, the true 
centre of the city, is not the Piazza del Duomo, but the 
Piazza S. Oronzo, close to the old Castle on the east of the 
city. Here the market is held, and most picturesque and 
busy it can be. The seventeenth- century column in the 
midst bears a statue of the patron of the city dating from 
the first half of the eighteenth century, and in one corner 
stands the Sedile, now a museum, of old and till 1851 the 
Town Hall ; it dates from 1592. Here, too, stands the 
Venetian church of S. Marco, dating from 1550 or there- 
about, but constantly restored. 

These are but the more famous sights in Lecce; the 
whole town is indeed full of seventeenth-century work and 
has a special character and delight of its own on that 
account, while its gay and busy life, its air of well-being, its 
shady, well-built streets, its curiously quiet old palaces, 
its gardens and orchards all encourage the traveller from 



OTRANTO 229 

the melancholy of Magna Grsecia to linger awhile and to 
leave Lecce at last with regret. There is this wonder, too, 
that from the roof of S. Cataldo, and certainly from the 
campanile of the Duomo, you may on a clear day of wind 
see the Acroceraunian mountains of Albania which shut 
in upon the south the great Bay of Valona which is the key 
of the Adriatic, and for the possession of which one of these 
days there will be a bloody war, unless indeed that mighty 
harbour can be placed into the hands of a minor power 
which shall be able to hold but not to use it. 

Something of this you may feel, if setting out from 
Lecce you will make your way by train or by road to 
Otranto, the little harbour and fishing village nearest to the 
great Bay of Valona which has played, and will play in the 
future, so great a part in the history of Italy. In the best 
years of the Empire it was outshone by Brindisi, but with 
the decay of the Imperial administration it gradually 
grew in favour as the port of the usual because the shortest 
passage not only to Greece but to Apollonia Dyrrhachium, 
and so to Constantinople. Its importance grew throughout 
the Dark Ages, and it was one of the last Byzantine strong- 
holds in the peninsula. It remained a place of considerable 
traffic all through the Middle Age till with the fall of 
Constantinople it began to decline, and was suddenly killed 
outright in 1480, when the Turks fell upon it and sacked 
it and desecrated its churches. From that awful blow it 
never recovered. In our own time its name was familiar 
to us all by reason of the cable to the East which there 
came to land, so that an English official was always in 
residence there ; but that too is now of the past, and Otranto 
is to-day as sleepy and quiet a place as is to be found 
in Italy. Whether in the great development of Italian sea 
power and the struggle that is coming it wiU awake remains 
to be seen. Certainly Italy is so poor in ports upon this 
coast that even this wiU probably not be neglected. 

The only thing that the people remember in Otranto 
to-day of all their past is the awful sack of the Turks in 



230 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

1480. The town is still full of the huge Turkish cannon- 
balls, and the church and convent of S. Francesco upon 
the Hill of Martyrs commemorate the dead. But what 
here in Otranto fills the mind of the Englishman, who may 
always be depended upon to be ignorant of the fact that 
he is a European, is the Castle now used as a barracks 
which gives its title to the famous romance of Horace 
Walpole. 

But the real delight of Otranto lies in its glorious 
Cathedral, a fine basilica splendid with marbles and ancient 
columns from a temple of Minerva, it is said, which stood 
upon the Punta S. Nicola. There is nothing certainly 
in Southern Italy to surpass the beautiful crypt upheld 
by no less than forty-two of these pillars in marble and 
porph5n:y, with splendid Byzantine capitals, and paved with 
the wonderful mosaic floor dating from the middle of the 
twelfth century. 

On the way back from Otranto to Lecce, for neither 
S. Maria di Leuca, upon the southernmost point of the 
lapygian peninsula, nor the island town and port of Galli- 
poli upon its western side, are for the tourist worth the 
trouble of the long journey, it is very well worth while to 
stop at Soleto to see the magnificent campanile for which 
that village is famous. Soleto lies on the plain upon 
the site of the ancient Soletum of Pliny, but there is only 
one thing remaining of any interest there — the glorious 
campanile built in 1397 by Raimondello Balzo Orsini, who 
set it up " for the honour of his name," by the hand of 
Francesco Colaci of Lecce. There is no more beautiful 
tower in all Italy of the South than this. 

Raimondello Balzo Orsini was Count of Soleto. He 
was captured by the Turks in the Holy Land, and ransomed 
by the people of Galatina for 12,000 ducats. In recom- 
pense for that deliverance by his people and for the honour 
of his name, as he says, he built not only the great and 
splendid tower of Soleto in 1397, but in 1390 walled the 
city of Galatina and built there the fine church of 



GALATINA 231 

S. Caterina, this last because the church of S. Pietro was 
served by Greeks and knew only the Greek rite. 

Galatina lies perhaps two miles from Soleto upon the 
hills, a shining place, walled still, and all it might seem of 
gold in the evening sun. It is a true town, busy and 
large enough, but it can boast of little else save the five- 
aisled basilica of Balzo Orsini with its magnificent portals 
in the manner of those of SS. Niccolo e Cataldo at Lecce, 
with smaller flanking doorways, and over all a great rose 
window. 

Within, the church is spacious and noble, the Lady 
Chapel which here forms the apse being an addition by 
Balzo's son Giovanni, and there stands his gorgeous tomb. 
A very noble monument commemorates his father to the 
right of the high altar. The church is largely covered 
with frescoes of the fifteenth century which are of very 
considerable beauty in the nave, and represent the life of 
S. Catherine, the Creation, the life of Our Lord, and the 
Seven Sacraments. 

It is very well worth while turning out of the way to 
spend an hour or two in these places, and from either, for 
the same line serves them both, it is easy to visit Gallipoli ; 
but the walls of that strange island fortress have been flung 
down, and practically nothing remains there worth the 
trouble of the journey save the beauty of the coast and the 
Ionian Sea, of which he who has passed through Magna 
Graecia has already had his fill, while the coast of Gallipoli 
has nothing to offer comparable with that about Rocella 
and Rossano. 



XVIII 

TO BRINDISI AND BARI 

FROM Lecce the railway runs northward across the 
vast ApuHan plain out of sight of the sea until it comes 
to Brindisi, still so famous though scarcely worth a visit. 
The curiously dismal town is set on a low headland as 
broad as it is long, within two greater promontories which 
almost meet before it to the east and spread widely north 
and south, forming a vast external port, which is guarded 
on one side by the island of S. Andrea and on the other 
by the small island group of Le Petagne. In order to 
prevent the silting up of the narrow passages between the 
external and internal ports, the island of S. Andrea on 
the north, which is strongly fortified, has been in modem 
times joined to the mainland by a solid breakwater of 
stone. The internal port within the narrow passage 
between the two outer promontories is divided by the 
headland upon which Brindisi stands into two great 
harbours, the Seno di Grande on the north and the Seno 
di Piccolo on the south, and altogether the place offers 
incomparably the finest port upon all the Italian shore of 
the Adriatic, its position so far south being perhaps its 
greatest advantage, while its only drawback is its propen- 
sity to silt up with sand. 

Brindisi seems to have been used and famous from 
very early times, though it was never a Greek city. Ac- 
cording to Strabo, it had long been governed by its own 
kings at the time of the foundation of Tarentum, and it is 

indeed as the rival of that great maritime city on the Ionian 

232 



BRINDISI 233 

Sea that it appears when it attracted the attention of 
Rome and led her to turn her arms against the Salentines, 
one of whose chief cities Brindisi was in 267 B.C. There, 
in 244 B.C., Rome estabhshed a colony, and from that 
moment Brundusium, as the Romans called it, rose to a 
place of the greatest political and economic importance, 
increasing even as Tarentum decreased in wealth and 
prosperity. 

It was circumstance as well as Rome which fought 
against Tarentum. The great Greek port upon the Ionian 
Sea in truth led nowhere and looked towards nothing, 
while Brindisi was the gate to Greece and the East, and 
as the Roman arms were carried first into Macedonia and 
so into Asia, Brindisi became their natural exit ; its admir- 
able harbour, capable of sheltering the greatest fleets of 
those days in perfect safety, soon won it a lonely precedence 
over every other port in the peninsula. Here, in 229 B.C., 
Rome assembled her fleet and army for the First Illyrian 
War ; here, during the Second Punic War, she prepared to 
prevent the flank attack of Philip of Macedonia. And 
since this was the position of Brindisi in the Roman ad- 
ministration it is not surprising that she remained faithful 
through the campaign of Hannibal, and was one of the 
eighteen colonies which spontaneously came forward 
to assist the Eternal City with supplies after the appalling 
defeats of the Trebbia, Trasimene, and Cannae. 

Thus Brindisi came to be the Eastern Gate of Rome 
and of Italy, the terminus of the Appian Way, as she is 
to-day, though less exclusively, the Eastern Gate of Europe, 
and it would be easy to record a continuous series of in- 
cidents during the later years of the Republic and through- 
out the years of the Empire in which she thus appears. 
Here Sulla landed with his army on his return from the 
Mithridatic War in 83 B.C. to face his enemies in Rome, 
and because Brindisi flung wide to him her gates he re- 
warded her by granting her an immunity from all taxation, 
a privilege she long enjoyed. Hither, too, came Cicero from 



234 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

exile in 57 B.C. ; while in the civil war between Caesar and 
Pompey Brindisi played a great part. Pompey had here 
gathered his forces, intending to cross the Adriatic, but 
before he could move Caesar was upon him, investing the 
town upon the landward side, and having no fleet of his 
own he attempted to close the narrow channel from the 
internal to the external port by driving poles in the fair- 
way by night. In this, however, he was not successful, 
and Pompey managed to escape to lUyricum. It was 
again at Brindisi that Octavius first assumed the name 
of Csesar, the garrison there being the first to declare in 
his favour. Nor did it play a small part in the war with 
Antony. 

When we think of Brundusium to-day, however, it is 
none of these things which come into our minds, but perhaps 
Horace's journey with Maecenas in 37 B.C., and certainly 
Virgil's death here on his return from Greece in 19 B.C. 
In his fifty-second year the great poet set out for Greece, 
intending to devote three years to the correction and com- 
pletion of his greatest work, the Mneid. He had come 
as far as Athens when he met Augustus, who was returning 
to Rome from the East, and suddenly Virgil changed his 
mind and decided to return with the Emperor. Before 
setting out, however, he desired to see the city of Megara. 
It was September and very hot, and apparently he caught 
a fever upon the journey. At any rate he was ill when he 
set out for Italy, and though his voyage was uninterrupted 
he came to Brundusium at last only to die there on 
September 21, 19 B.C. 

All through the years of the Empire Brundusium 
flourished exceedingly, but with the failure of that great 
administration it declined, and Otranto, already a formid- 
able rival, took its place during the Gothic wars. In the 
Byzantine wars it plays indeed but a small part, and though 
with the rest of Apulia the Byzantine emperors long 
retained possession of it, their claims constantly disputed 
by Goth and Lombard and Saracen, it declined, to rise 



BRINDISI 235 

again with the advent of the Normans, but to fail alto- 
gether after the Crusades, and to be destroyed by Lewis of 
Hungary in 1348, and utterly demolished by the frightful 
earthquake of 1458. After that calamity even its harbour 
was allowed to silt up, and was not again opened till 1775. 
Its modern importance is largely due to the English 
occupation of India, and later of Egypt. 

Little remains in the city worth seeing apart from 
the curious geography of its port. The Cathedral, in which 
Frederick 11 was married to his second wife, lolanthe of 
Jerusalem, in 1225, was utterly destroyed in 1458, and has 
been entirely rebuilt. The church of S. Giovanni of the 
Knights Templar perished in the same catastrophe. Only 
the mighty Castello founded by Frederick 11 and enlarged 
by Charles v remains with the great cipoUino column on the 
quay, its fine Byzantine capital carved with the heads of the 
gods, a work of the tenth century as we see it, though the 
column with another, the base of which alone remains, is 
said to have marked in ancient times the terminus of the 
Appian Way. 

Leaving Brindisi, the railway curves inland, and then 
again seeks the littoral, running northward to Bari upon 
the seaward side of a long range of hills which gradually 
approach the sea at Monopoli. The second station after 
leaving Brindisi is that of Carovigno. The town which 
lies inland over the hills was anciently known as Carbina, 
and was the scene of the appalling vengeance of the 
Tarentines upon the Messapians for the defeat they and the 
Rhegians had sustained at their hands, a defeat which 
Herodiotus tells us was the bloodiest that had occurred in 
his time. The vengeance for this was exacted at Carbina ; 
the town was sacked, and the Messapian women were 
outraged upon the altar of their gods with such refine- 
ments of lust that one must suppose an extraordinary 
corruption of manners among the Tarentines. Later, in 
expiation of these excesses, they dedicated at Delphi the 
great bronze horses of Ageadas of Argos. 



236 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Not far from Carovigno, on the top of the hills, more 
than 600 feet high, stands the walled and picturesque 
town of Ostuni, which boasts a fine Gothic cathedral; 
while a little farther north, at the foot of the hills eastward, 
lies Fasano, a large town which still preserves in itsMunicipio 
the noble old palace of the Knights of S. John of Jerusalem, 
dating from the first years of the sixteenth century. 

A little beyond Fasano, close to the sea, lies Torre 
d'Agnazzo, the site of the ancient city of Gnatia, which 
Horace made his last resting-place on his journey to 
Brundusium. He calls it " a place built when the Nymphs 
were angry," and tells us that it " gave us theme for 
laughter and joke, because they tried to persuade us there 
that frankincense melts without fire in the entrance of 
their temple. Let the Jew Apella believe it, not me ; for 
I have been taught that the Gods lead a life free from care, 
and that if nature works wonders, it is not that the Gods 
trouble themselves to send them down from the roof of 
heaven." Certain remains of the old city of this miracle 
are still to be seen. 

The line now passes on seaward through a fruitful 
country of olive gardens and vineyards to Monopoli, the 
ancient Monopolis. The town would not be worth a visit but 
for the noble picture by Palma Vecchio in the eighteenth- 
century Cathedral, a San Sebastian. Far more picturesque 
than Monopoli is Polignano, which stands on a great rock 
over the sea. This, like so many of the towns on the 
Ionian Sea, was a refuge established in the Dark Age by 
the people of a far more ancient city upon the shore. The 
ancient city here was Neapolis, situated to the north of 
Polignano, and we know nothing at all of it save the fact 
of its existence, which we learn from its coins, though its 
site remains not altogether without ruins. So under the 
evening we come at last into the curiously modern city 
of Bari, which is so difiicult to know and to love. 

Bari, I suppose, is as old as anything in Apulia, and yet 
one's first impression on entering it is altogether of a place 




! % 




i ? 






m 



BARI 237 

as new and parvenu as any American city upon the Pacific 
slope. The truth is, Bari is a double city. The brutal town 
into which one steps at once from the railway station is 
wholly an affair of to-day, a foolish city of broad streets 
upon which the sun beats down mercilessly, where trams 
rush to and fro, and where there is not a single noble 
building ; indeed, a mere industrial town of the third class. 
This we can safely ignore : it has nothing to say to us. 
There remains, however, the old city, beyond the new 
town seaward, built altogether upon its triangular pro- 
montory thrust out into the sea ; this is as curiously 
interesting and picturesque a place as can be found in 
all the broad plains of Apulia. Moreover, it is very ancient, 
and can boast of several noble churches, a great castle, 
and the shrine of one of the most famous saints in the 
calendar. All the noise and dirt and discourtesy of the 
great new town which has attached itself to this wonderful 
mediaeval city is forgotten in a moment in this wonder and 
delight. Nothing indeed can be found in all Apulia more 
picturesque than the walled city of Bari, based as it were 
on the new broad Corso Vittorio Emanuele, thrust out 
thence into the sea. This is the old city. One wanders 
into it through the Piazza Ferrarese and the Porta Mercan- 
tile, and so round the S. Scholastica ramparts over the sea, 
in and out of the churches of S. Nicola, S. Gregorio, the 
Cathedral, under the great Castello on the north, through 
the narrowest tunnelled ways among houses as old as the 
Hohenstaufen and scarcely touched in all the so-called 
improvements, the rise of the vast and regular modern 
city between the Corso and the Piazza Roma. 

We hear no word of Barium, Bari, in history before the 
conquest of Apulia by the Romans, we know nothing of 
its origin, but its coins bear witness that it early came 
under Greek influence, probably that of Tarentum. But 
it would appear never to have been anything but the 
walled fishing town which Horace calls it until the fall of 
the Roman administration, when its position upon the 



238 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Via Appia preserved it from utter decay, while this and its 
port in the centuries which followed made it a supreme 
object of dispute among the Goths, the Byzantines, the 
Lombards, and the Saracens. It fell more than once to 
the Saracens, who thence issued out to lay waste Apulia ; 
but when, with the assistance of Louis ii, grandson of 
Charlemagne, they had been driven out in 871 by the 
Byzantines, the Imperialists made it the citadel of Apulia 
and the residence of the Catapan, the governor of the 
province. The Saracens, however, besieged it again in 
1002, and would have taken it but for the Venetians, who 
sent a fleet under the Doge Pietro Orseolo to relieve it, 
and therefore there stands to this day in the old market- 
place in gratitude the Lion of S. Mark. 

With the rest of the South, Bari fell to the Normans ; 
but in 1156 it sided with the Byzantines against 
William i, son of Roger, first King of Naples, and he razed 
it to the ground and for sixteen years it remained a mere 
ruin, only inhabited by a few poor priests who would not 
desert the shrine of S. Nicholas, which alone had almost 
escaped damage in the general overthrow. The city was 
rebuilt by William the Good, son of William i, and by 
1 189 was once more a flourishing city, its port full of the 
ships of the Emperor Frederick i, about to set out on the 
Crusade. To Frederick 11 the city owes its mighty Castle, 
and there Manfred met and entertained the Emperor of 
Constantinople. Frederick 11, however, had always 
known the people of Bari " Gens infida Bari verbis tibi 
multa promittit," and it is therefore without surprise we 
learn that after the death of Manfred they welcomed his 
conqueror, Charles of Anjou, who gave magnificent gifts to 
the shrine of S. Nicholas, but at the same time taxed them 
so heavily that they had no sooner welcomed him than 
they regretted Manfred. 

In the fourteenth century Bari became a dukedom, and 
passed from the Del Balzo family to Attendolo Sforza, and 
after many adventures was ceded in 1500 to Isabella of 



BARI 239 

Aragon, widow of Gian Galeazzo Sforza of Milan. She was 
a woman of fine culture, and in Bari devoted herself to the 
education of her daughter Bona, who inherited Bari and 
married the King of Poland. In 1555, Bona having lost 
her husband came as her mother had done to live in Bari, 
where she died in the Castello in 1558, leaving her Duchy 
by will to Philip 11 of Spain, and thus the Duchy came 
to the Spanish crown and was reunited with the rest of the 
Kingdom. 

In the old city of Bari to-day one's thoughts are full of 
the history of the place. One passes down these narrow 
winding ways from Frederick 11' s castle, which Isabella 
and Bona Sforza turned into a palace, to the Cathedral of 
S. Sabino, a building of the eleventh and twelfth centuries 
utterly ruined in the eighteenth. The whole group of 
buildings, the great cruciform church under its glorious low 
octagonal cupola, the beautiful campanile, the circular 
baptistery, is, however, very splendid, and even on closer 
inspection a large number of details, windows, carvings, 
pillars, and especially the cavernous fagade with its lovely 
rose, remain as when they were first made. 

Within, however, the church is disappointing, full 
only of restoration. Two pictures still remain there, 
ascribed respectively to Tintoretto and Paolo Veronese, 
which are worth some trouble to see. The first repre- 
sents the miraculous healing of S. Roch, and the latter the 
Madonna and Child enthroned on high with S. Catherine 
and S. George below, the latter presenting the donor to 
the Madonna. 

In the crypt, which has suffered even more than the 
church from modernization, is a Byzantine picture of the 
Madonna, S. Maria di Constantinopoli, which is said to 
have been brought to Bari in 733 ; here, too, lies the body 
of S. Sabinus, his head being preserved in a silver reliquary. 
In the sacristy are preserved two Greek manuscripts of 
the eleventh century of the Easter Exultet sung by the 
Deacon to the tone of the Preface — the only time in 



240 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

the year that he is permitted to raise his voice in that 
tone. 

The Cathedral of Bari, however, is by no means the 
most holy or the most popular church in the city. The 
greatest shrine in Bari and one of the noblest churches in 
all Italy, one of the four Apulian Basiliche Palatine, the 
others being at Acquaviva delle Fonti, Altamura, and 
Monte S. Angelo, is the great church of S. Nicholas towards 
the sea, which was founded in 1087 upon the site of the old 
palace of the Byzantine Catapan by Robert Guiscard, who 
gave the place to the bishop that he might there enshrine 
the relics of S. Nicholas, which forty-seven knights of Bari 
had rescued from the Saracens at Myra, in Lycia. Here we 
have still, though mutilated, a twelfth-century basilica, 
very nobly planned, and boasting yet wonderfully carved 
doorways and windows, capitals and precious marble 
columns with lion bases. The whole as seen from afar, 
from the Castello for instance, towers up over the city, pro- 
claiming itself the great shrine of the place. 

Within, we see at once the church is a basilica, with 
galleries, transept, and semicircular apse very like the 
Cathedral ; but its secret and treasure are not here but 
in the crypt consecrated in 1089 by Pope Urban 11, where 
beneath the silver altar, a work now of the seventeenth 
century, lies the body of S. Nicholas. S. Nicholas, the 
patron of all boys, whom we invoke under the barbarous 
title of Santa Claus at Christmas-time, because he brings 
gifts, and his feast too falls upon 6th December, was a 
citizen of Patras of a rich and noble family. The best 
known story concerning him is delightfully told by 
Voragine : " When his father and mother were departed 
out of this life, he began to think how he might distribute 
his riches, and not to the praising of the world, but to the 
honour and glory of God. And it was so that one, his 
neighbour, had then three daughters, virgins, and he was 
a nobleman ; but for the poverty of them together they 
were constrained and in very purpose to abandon them 



BARI 241 

to the sin of lechery, so that by the gain and winning of 
their infamy they might be sustained. And when the 
holy man Nicholas knew thereof he had great horror 
of this villainy, and threw by night secretly into the 
house of the man a mass of gold wrapped in a cloth. And 
when the man arose in the morning, he found this mass of 
gold, and rendered to God therefore great thankings, and 
therewith he married his oldest daughter. And a little 
while after this holy servant of God threw in another mass 
of gold, which the man found and thanked God, and 
purposed to wake for to know him that so had aided him 
in his poverty, and after a few days Nicholas doubled the 
mass of gold and cast it into the house of this man. He 
awoke by the sound of the gold, and followed Nicholas, 
which fled from him., and he said to him : ' Sir, flee not 
away so but that I may see and know thee.' Then he ran 
after him more hastily and knew that it was Nicholas ; 
and anon he kneeled down, and would have kissed his feet, 
but the holy man would not, but required him not to tell 
nor discover this thing as long as he lived." 

Voragine goes on to tell of the death of S. Nicholas 
after recounting many of his innumerable miracles. He 
had become Bishop of Myra, " and when it pleased our 
Lord to have him depart out of this world he prayed the 
Lord that He would send him His angels ; and inclining his 
head he saw the angels come to him, whereby he knew 
well that he should depart, and began this holy psalm : 
In te Domine speravi unto In manus tuas Domine, and so 
saying he rendered up his soul and died the year of our 
Lord three hundred and forty-three with great melody 
sung of the celestial company. And when he was buried 
in a tomb of marble, a fountain of oil sprang out from the 
head unto his feet ; and unto this day holy oil issueth out 
of his body, which is much available to the health of sick- 
nesses of many men. . . . 

" Long time after this the Turks destroyed the city of 
Myra, and then came thither forty-seven knights of Bari, 
16 



242 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

and four monks showed to them the sepulchre of S. 
Nicholas, and they opened it and found the bones swimming 
in the oil, and they bare them away honourably into the 
city of Bari in the year of our Lord ten hundred and eighty- 
seven." 

That miraculous oil which flowed from the body of 
S. Nicholas, as Voragine tells us, has not ceased in all these 
centuries ; it still attracts enormous crowds of pilgrims, 
and is known as the Manna di S. Niccolo. It is sold in 
tiny flasks outside the church, and is said to cure all kinds 
of diseases, as is told with much else in that most popular 
sequence, the model of many others which is still sung in 
procession by the pilgrims — 

Sospitati dedit segros 

Oiei perfusio 
Nicolaus naufragantum 

Adfuit praesidio. 

Relevavit a defunatis 
Defunctum in bivio. 

Baptizatur auri viso 
Judaeus indicio. 

Vas in mari mersum, patri 
Redditur cum filio. 

O quam probat Sanctum Dei 
Farris augmentatio. 

Ergo laudes Niccolao 

Concinat haec concio. 

Nam qui corde poscit ilium 

Propulsato vitio, 
Sospes regreditur. — Amen.^ 

The whole crypt, upheld by beautiful columns, one of 

1 The sick are given health by the miraculous oil, they who are in 
danger of shipwreck are delivered by S. Nicholas, he raised a dead 
man to life by the wa37-side, a Jew was baptized on the miraculous 
recovery of his money, a vase lost in the sea and a lost child also he 
recovered. O how great a saint did he appear when he gave cover 
in a famine. Sing therefore hymns in praise of Nicholas, for all who 
pray to him with earnest hearts will be cured of their vices. 



BARl 243 

which surrounded by a grill is said to have been miracu- 
lously brought hither from Myra, and is of a strange and 
lovety marble, is devoted as his shrine, the holiest spot in 
Bari and the true centre of the old city. It stands there 
the last remnant of Byzantium, the Greek Empire and 
the Greek Church. About this shrine that great council 
assembled in 1098 in which Urban 11 tried to settle the 
differences between the Greek and Latin Churches, and 
it was to commemorate this that the great episcopal 
throne in the Treasury was made, a very noble thing. For 
S. Nicholas was and is to the Greeks what S. Martin is to 
us, and now for near a thousand years the Church of 
Rome has honoured his name and sung in his honour some 
of the loveliest of her antiphones. 

From the crypt one returns to wander round the church 
to look at the spoilt picture of Bartolommeo Vivarini, the 
Madonna enthroned with four saints, and to visit the 
tomb of the Duchess of Bari, Bona Sforza, Queen of Poland, 
with its Polish saints about it, Casimir and Stanislaus. 

Little else remains : the ancient and disused church 
of S. Gregory, the chapel of the Greek Palace, which once 
stood where now rises the church of S. Nicholas, the 
Annunziata with its picture of the Madonna by Pietro da 
Cortona, and perhaps above all the old harbour, the true 
origin of Bari with its busy life so picturesque still, for 
all the modern improvements, the tall ships, the bearded 
sailors, the smell of the sea. 



XIX 

TERRA DI BARI 

BITONTO, RUVO, CORATO, CASTEL DEL MONTE, 
ANDRIA, BARLETTA, TRANI, BISCEGLIE, 
AND MOLFETTA 

THE vast province of Apulia, divided as it is into three 
major parts — the Terra d'Otranto in the south, a long 
peninsula, the heel of Italy with its capital at Lecce ; the 
Terra di Bari, a vast and rolling country of long hills and 
broad and shallow valleys, whose chief city gives it its 
name ; and the Tavoliere delle Puglie, the great low-lying 
plains of the north, which, as in the days of Strabo and 
Pliny, are still famous for their sheep — is not easy to see, 
for though its natural beauties are few it is filled every- 
where with cities, each one of which seems to have some- 
thing to boast of — a great castle or a noble church ; and 
this is more especially true of the central province, the 
Terra di Bari. 

For the exploration of this uplifted country of great 
rolling downs Bari is perhaps the best centre, for 
though the accommodation that great city offers the 
traveller is none of the best, it is infinitely better than 
that to be found elsewhere within the province, while 
all the railways — and in a country where the distances 
are so great it is necessary to use them — seem to 
meet in it. 

It was not, however, by railway that we determined to 

set out one morning upon an excursion of three or four 

days to visit Bitonto and Andria and Barletta, but by 

244 



BITONTO 245 

tram. The road lies across the low, rolling hills, every- 
where planted with olives and almonds only too obviously 
utilitarian, to Bitonto, a curiously lonely city of some 
30,000 inhabitants, which still retains its old walls and 
vast round-towered Castello, and boasts of the most 
beautiful Cathedral in Apulia, Of its vast antiquity 
there can be no doubt, its coins seeming to connect it with 
Greek Tarentum, but its sole interest for us to-day lies in 
its Cathedral, founded about the year 1200, and built upon 
the plan of S. Niccolo of Bari, which it outshines altogether 
in its richness of detail and better preservation. We 
have in it, indeed, one of the noblest examples of the Lom- 
bard-Byzantine style, a basilica of three aisles with galleries 
and arcades everywhere covered with sculpture and carv- 
ing of the utmost delicacy and fancy, especially about its 
western and southern portals, the former of which has a 
glorious sculptured hood, supported by pillars resting 
upon gryphons. In window, door, and gallery, indeed, 
nothing can surpass the beauty of this great church in 
its own style. 

Within are two splendid ambones, standing curiously 
enough on the same side of the nave, the larger of which 
bears the name of the priestly sculptor Nicolaus, Sacerdos 
et Magister, 1229. The holy water stoups are of the same 
period. And if the nave is thus glorified, what can be 
said of the crypt, its roof borne by twenty-four columns 
of marble with a profusion of wonderful carving ? It 
easily surpasses any other in this part of Italy. 

A charming Renaissance house with a graceful loggia 
in the town should not be missed. 

One goes on through the pruned olives to Ruvo, famous 
for its wonderful Greek vases o-nd figurine, for Ruvo is the 
ancient Rubi, to which Horace came so weary in the rain. 
But, in spite of the beauty of the vases, Ruvo ought to 
be much more famous for its glorious thirteenth-century 
Cathedral, which has, I think, the loveliest fagade to be 
found in all Apulia, It is a magnificent Norman work 



246 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

with a glorious rose window, a round-arched double window 
beneath it, and three portals surrounded with sculpture, 
that in the midst supported by columns of marble resting 
on the backs of monsters. The central nave is lofty, and 
the roofs of the aisles slope up to its height, giving a 
northern grace and beauty to the whole difficult to forget. 
Within are some interesting fifteenth-century frescoes. 
The town stands high, some 900 feet above the sea, a rude 
neglected place with nothing but its Cathedral and a fine 
Renaissance court in the Palazzo Spadato to recommend 
it ; but the Cathedral is worth any trouble to see, the wonder 
being that it is not more famous. 

The time-table of the tramway that had brought us 
so far and enabled us to visit Bitonto and Ruvo is so well 
arranged that it was possible to go on to Andria before dark, 
but we only got as far as Corato, a town twice as big as 
Ruvo, but without any attraction at all save this, that it 
affords the best starting-place from which to visit Frederick 
ii's Castel del Monte upon the great hills to the west, Le 
Murge, as they are called, more than 1700 feet above the 
sea. 

The road to this beautiful and lonely building is scarcely 
j&t for a carriage, so rough is it ; far better is it to go afoot 
over the huge stones, though it is not much less than 
twenty miles from Corato to Castel del Monte and back. 
The wide views of this strange country, so much more noble 
as seen in a great expanse than in detail, reward one as one 
goes, and the Hohenstaufen Castle is in itself a sufficient 
return for the journey. For it shines there in the sun 
like a rose, the colour of a Gloire de Dijon, built of the 
limestone of its own bare hills, a great octagon with a tower 
at each angle just topping the walls, and a great gate east 
and west, a ruin, but almost perfect and in utter loneli- 
ness. 

Castel del Monte is a two-storied building built about an 
octagonal courtyard ; its Gothic windows look within and 
without, and its chief gate of rosy marble supported by 



CASTEL DEL MONTE 247 

marble columns resting upon lions looks all across the 
rolling and stony fields and olive yards of Apulia to the 
shining sea. Light and graceful as it is, it seems scarce 
strong enough to endure in so lonely a place the mere 
passage of time or to withstand the great winds of this vast 
country which lies beneath it like a sea whose huge rolling 
waves break about its feet. It is so desolate that it is hard 
to believe that the gay and learned Emperor who, like a true 
German, loved pomp above all things could have cared for 
such a place. Here perhaps he came with his Saracens to 
hunt or to meditate or to accuse himself, of which indeed 
he had much need, seeing that for so many years of his life 
he was excommunicate. His inexplicable figure haunts all 
this country, and is as curiously ambiguous as Cast el del 
Monte itself. Who was ever hated and loved as he, save 
perhaps his own son Manfred ? What is the truth about 
him ? That he is become the hero of Protestant historians 
and writers is easy to understand, for he was the enemy 
of the Pope ; but is it possible to see in him anything but a 
cultured barbarian without a sense of responsibility or any 
clairvoyance of past or future ? I doubt it. That he was 
cruel we know, and that without measure : his crimes attest 
it. That he was a traitor to Christendom we more than 
half suspect. The mere fact that he faced Gregory ix and 
Innocent iv is not surely in itself a virtue, unless indeed 
anarchy and atheism are the proper goals of our civilization. 
Hear, then, this story of Castel del Monte. It was begun by 
the Emperor in 1238, and it seems that Frederick was 
anxious for its completion, for we hear that he sent one of 
his retainers to see when it would be finished, but he fell in 
love with a maid of Melfi and forgot to return, till he was 
sent for, when he reported that the place was scarce begun. 
Then Frederick in a rage sent for the builder, who rather 
than face him killed himself and all his family. At last 
Frederick, in spite of the bad roads, came himself and saw 
this great and splendid work, and furious with the lying 
lover dragged him himself by the hair of his head to the 



248 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

top of the Castle and flung him down from the battle- 
ments to be eaten by the hawks that still wheel about 
the deserted tower. The story may be legend, but it is 
true to the character of the man who was guilty of 
every sort of atrocity and has been magnified into a 
hero by the modem world because he was an atheist, 
tolerated Jew and Mohammedan, and made war upon 
the Pope. 

But the victims of Frederick's cruelty at Castel del Monte 
were to be avenged ; for it was here the sons of Manfred, 
mere children, were imprisoned by Charles of Anjou. 
They seem to have been forgotten for some thirty years, for 
when they were remembered and delivered, or at least 
brought to Naples by Charles ii, we hear of them as '' clothed 
like beggars." How often must they have gazed out from 
the top of the old Castle as we may do to-day upon this 
arid and windy country, where the sun is master and one 
often praj^s for rain, to the free Adriatic shining there east- 
ward, and the long, long coast from the mighty headland 
of Gargano with its shrine of S. Michael Archangel to Bari 
and beyond, or westward to the vast hills of the Basilicata, 
the wild hills of the South, and between, the purple cone of 
Monte Vulture as dead and immutable and forgotten as this 
nameless hill upon which their lives were passed. La Spia 
delle Puglie the Apulians call the Castle, but indeed it spies 
out nothing, for the world as seen from there is so vast that 
nothing can be seen in it but the rocks of which it is built and 
the sea, which seems to mock it shining in the sun. For 
everywhere one goes in this country one finds dryness and 
drought. Whether of old it was covered in its high places 
with forests now destroyed or whether the climate has 
changed from other causes, Apulia to-day is no longer the 
naturally fruitful land of which we read of old : it suffers 
everywhere from an aridity and a lack of rain that often 
threaten to make it utterly desolate. Everywhere it is 
stony, and these stones are gathered and piled into tent-like 
huts, which with the great cisterns for the storage of the 



ANDRIA 249 

scanty waters are scattered all over Apulia, and are indeed 
its most characteristic features. It is partly, as I suspect, 
this scarcity of water which has made of Apulia a land of 
cities, a country without villages but with towns really huge, 
when one remembers the smallness of the total population 
of the province. In a forty- mile journey, for instance, you 
pass from Bari through a depopulated countryside with not 
less than five great cities : Bari itself, which has a population 
of about 74,000, Bitonto with over 29,000, Terlizza with 
over 23,000, Ruvo with 24,000, Corato with 38,000, Andria 
with 50,000. All the people live in the cities, and proceed 
to their work on the vast farms very early in the morning 
upon donkeys or mules or afoot, so that every city is noisy 
and dirty, the streets often impassable by reason of the 
crowds of people, beasts, and goats. 

There is Andria, for instance, to which one descends by 
way of Corato from Castel del Monte, passing on the way 
the site of the Disfeda di Barletta, of which I shall speak 
later. Andria is a thickly populated place of 50,000, 
thousands of whom pour out of its destroyed walls to 
their fields every morning at sunrise, returning in the 
twilight ; the place is a vast peasant city, the like of which 
no other province of Italy knows. 

Andria itself is not a very attractive place. It seems 
to be little older than the Normans, and owes its fame to 
the Hohenstaufen, Frederick 11 especially liking it, and 
it him. It appears always to have been faithful to him, 
unlike Bari and other cities of his Puglia, which during 
his absence sided with the Pope. Frederick embellished 
Andria with many fine buildings, and was in acknowledg- 
ment greeted on his return from the Holy Land by five 
youths of Andria representing the city, who welcomed him 
with the following Latin hexameters : — 

Rex felix Federici veni dux noster amatus 
Est tuus adventus nobis super omnia gratus 
Obses quinque tene, nostri piguamini amoris 
Esse tecum volumis omnibus diebus et horis, 



250 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Frederick, who was a good poet, is said to have answered — 

Andria felix nostri affixa medullis 

Absit quod Fredericus sit tui muneris iners ; 

Andria vale felix, omnisque gravaminis expers. 

These verses, the felix changed to fidelis, were placed 
over one of the gates of the city, that of S. Andrea or 
deir Imperatore, where they still may be seen. 

There are several interesting churches in Andria ; one 
of them, that of S. Agostino, is a thirteenth-century 
building, having a very noble doorway wonderfully carved, 
and having reliefs in the lunette under the slightly pointed 
arch, of S. Peter between two bishops, one of whom is 
perhaps S. Richard. This church Frederick ii gave to 
the Templars in 1230, but after the suppression of the 
Order it came to the Augustinians in 1387. 

But the best thing left to us in Andria is the Cathedral ; 
this is dedicated to the English S. Richard, who is said 
to have come here in 492 " to bring light to them that 
sit in darkness." Without, before the palace of the 
Dukes of Andria, stands his statue in bronze. The church, 
however, of old, a fine Gothic building, was transformed 
in 1463, and has been restored again and again. Little 
of its ancient splendour remains to it ; even its tombs 
have been broken and carried away, so that we do not 
know any longer where to look for those, surely once 
splendid, monuments of Frederick ii's two wives, lolanthe 
of Jerusalem, and that Isabella of England who died at 
Foggia and was buried here in 1244. Perhaps the ruins 
of their tombs are in the crypt where, among much debris, 
are several graves, fragments of sculpture, and wall 
paintings. 

The church of S. Domenico has been restored out of 
all recognition, but it boasts a splendid piece of sculpture 
of the fifteenth century, a bust of Francesco da Banco, 
perhaps by Laurana. The church of Porta Santa is a 
beautiful Renaissance building. 



BARLETTA 251 

Apulia is famous for its rock-hewn churches, the most 
notable of which is that of S. Michele upon the lofty head- 
land of Gargano ; but two not without interest are to be 
seen within two miles of Andria to the west of the city 
outside the Porta dell' Imperatore. The nearer of the 
two is that of S. Croce, where a few frescoes of the fifteenth 
century, rude things at best, still remain. The more 
imposing is more than a mile farther, the curious pilgrim- 
age church of S. Maria dei Miracoli, which seems to be 
older than Andria itself, if one may judge by what is left 
of its wall paintings. Both are worth a visit. They 
served of old the Greek monks, who here found a refuge 
as they came out of the Terra d'Otranto fleeing from 
the Saracens. 

From Andria it is but seven miles to Barletta, the 
railway and the sea. Upon the way, otherwise unin- 
teresting enough, one crosses a " tratturo," one of those 
great grass highways, more common in the Tavoliere, a 
hundred yards broad, along which the vast herds of cattle 
and flocks of sheep pass from the winter pastures of 
Apulia to the summer lawns of the mountains of Calabria 
or Abruzzi. 

Barletta itself has little to offer the traveller. It is 
an ancient and dirty city, of a similar character to Andria, 
but with something of a port, for it stands upon the sea. 
It boasts of a huge Castello, dating for the most part from 
the time of Charles v, a great Cathedral with a Norman 
campanile and western facade and a fourteenth-century 
choir and lovely pierced marble windows; but otherwise 
is spoiled by rebuilding and restoration. It contains a 
notable and lovely picture, the Madonna della Vittoria, 
the only signed work of Paolo de' Serafini da Modena, 
a picture of the early fifteenth century. The spoiled 
Gothic church of S. Sepolcro in the Corso and the church 
of S. Andrea near the harbour having a thirteenth-century 
doorway and a fine picture of the Madonna and Child 
with saints by Alvise Vivarini, dated 1483, should also 



252 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

be visited. Close to the sea, too, is the fine baroque palace 
of Frangianni — La Maria, with a loggia opening on the 
water. 

Close to the church of S. Sepolcro stands the most 
extraordinary of the city's antiquities, a colossal bronze 
statue of the Emperor Heraclius, fourteen feet high, 
which it is said he designed for the church of S. Michele 
in Gargano ; but the ship which brought it to Italy was 
wrecked in the Adriatic, and the statue was only dis- 
covered in the sand off Barletta in 1469, when it was 
restored and set up here. It is a curiously ineffective 
work to come from Constantinople in the seventh 
century. 

Barletta is famous for two episodes in the history of 
Italy which took place within her territory. The first 
was the proclamation within the city by Frederick ii 
of his successors, his sons Henrj^ and Conrad, upon his 
departure for the Holy Land, where in the church of the 
Holy Sepulchre he crowned himself King of Jerusalem. 
The second was the famous tournament of 1503, which 
took place, however, between Andria and Corato. In 
the wars of Louis iv and Ferdinand of Aragon, Barletta 
was besieged by the Due de Nemours and defended by 
Gonsalvo da Cordova. Italian, not Spanish, chivalry 
had sunk to a low ebb, and spurred on by the taunts of 
the Spaniards the Italian knights challenged the French 
to a great tournament, thirteen a side. The Italians 
naturally claim the victor^/, and it seems that the French 
allow that at the first shock seven of their knights were 
overthrown ; they claim, however, that the rest fought so 
bravely that the judges — French, Italian, and Spanish — 
declared a drawn battle. The site of the combat is 
known to-day as the Epitaffo, for there, eighty years after 
the encounter, the Duke Ferrante Carracciolo, Prefect of 
the Terra di Bari, set up a monument to commemorate 
the affair. It bears a long inscription in Latin. 

From Barletta we turned southward along the coast 



IRANI 253 

towards Bari, and came first to Trani, which is worth any 
trouble to see. The town seemed cleaner than most of 
those in the Terra di Bari, and it boasts of one of the noblest 
Cathedrals in Apulia. This mighty church is magni- 
ficently situated on a hill above the sea. It is a Norman 
work begun in 1169, and its western fa9ade upon a platform 
reached by a double flight of steps north and south, and the 
arched campanile, remain to us from that time, as do the 
glorious bronze doors founded by Barisano of Trani in 
1179. Within, the church is for the most part ruined by 
restoration, but its vast crypt of iioo and the older one 
of S. Lucius, dating from 670, remain. The other churches, 
S. Andrea, the Ognissanti, vS. Giacomo, and S. Francesco, 
are interesting, the first two chiefly on account of the 
antique columns and fragments which they possess, while 
in the Ognissanti too is a fine Norman relief of the 
Annunciation, and S. Giacomo and S. Francesco retain 
still their old facades, the latter being a Byzantine building 
under three domes. The Castello, now a prison, dates 
from the time of Frederick ii, and is worth inspection. But 
the whole town is so gracious in spite of modern improve- 
ments that a whole day is not too much to give to it, linger- 
ing in the old churches, or about the harbour, or lounging 
in the pretty public gardens by the sea. 

If the night be spent in Trani, which possesses more than 
one very fair albergo, there will be plenty of time to visit 
Bisceglie and Molfetta on the way back to Bari on the 
morrow. Both, like Barletta and Trani, are great towns 
of between thirty and forty thousand inhabitants. The 
former, Bisceglie, should be visited chiefly for the sake 
of the lovely canopied fourteenth- century tombs of the 
Falconi in S. Magherita ; but it has too a Cathedral and two 
huge towers of a castle built by Frederick 11. Molfetta 
has large remains of its old walls, a great church with two 
campaniles and three cupolas, once a Cathedral dating from 
the fourteenth century. 



XX 

LE MURGE 

WE left Bari a few days later, going by Modugno and 
Bitteto, the latter of which has a fine late Gothic 
Cathedral of the fourteenth century, to Gioja del Colle, 
some thirty miles due south of Bari on the confines of the 
Terra d'Otranto in the direct line between Bari and 
Taranto. 

Gioja del Colle is a town of some 20,000 inhabitants, 
chiefly remarkable for its magnificent Castello built by 
Frederick 11 in 1230 to guard the great pass to the south 
here on the road from Bari to Taranto. This consists of 
huge square towers, very regularly built of enormous 
stones something after the manner of the Florentine 
palaces, joined by great walls similarly constructed. Of 
all Frederick's castles this is the most northern in style ; 
indeed, certain bizarre details, in the windows especially, 
which are curiously corniced with marble, suggest German 
work, or at least that to be found in the church of the Virgin 
at Cologne. 

Nothing else worth seeing remains in this busy city of 
peasants, and the traveller who has arrived by the midday 
train from Bari may set out again for Altamura in the 
middle of the afternoon. 

Altamura, a city of about the same size as Gioja, is a 
far more beautiful place. To begin with, it stands high, 
some 1500 feet over the sea, and is entirely surrounded 
still by its mediaeval walls, to which indeed it owes its 

name, or rather to those most ancient fortifications, traces 

254 



ALTAMURA 255 

of which still remain, which the mediaeval walls supplanted. 
Altamura is obviously of very great antiquity, owing its 
foundation, according to the local legend, to the Myrmidones 
after their return from the Trojan War. The place was 
more than once overthrown in the Dark Age by earth- 
quake and by the Saracens, but was rebuilt by Frederick 11, 
who there gathered the Greeks scattered through the Terra 
d'Otranto and established a university. The place seems 
to have been a sort of refuge, for we find that the Jews there 
had a synagogue and a ghetto. 

It is indeed to Frederick 11 that Altamura owes all 
its value and beauty. He it was who in 1232 founded the 
glorious Cathedral which was in great part destroyed by 
earthquake in 1316, but which in some sort nevertheless 
we still see, in spite of the most dreadful recent restora- 
tions. Originally modelled upon the church of S. Nicola 
of Bari, the Cathedral of Altamura, a Palatinate sanctuary, 
is a Basilica of three naves. The western fagade is especi- 
ally fine, with its windowed twin towers, its glorious rose 
and magnificent canopied entrance supported by marble 
pillars resting on the backs of lions and approached by a 
flight of steps. Over the central door in the lunette is a 
fine relief of the Madonna and Child with two adoring angels, 
and all round the door winds the tree of Jesse, surrounded 
again by marvellous reliefs, the lowest of which represent 
on either side the Annunciation. This doorway dates 
from the time of Robert the Wise. Nor are the windows 
with their beautiful pillars and exquisite tracery less lovely. 
Within, the trifore are beautiful, and the sixteenth-century 
ambone with its lovely reliefs of the life of our Lord is a 
work of art hard to match in Apulia, where works of this 
sort and of this time are curiously rare. The fine pavement 
in the choir should be noticed. 

The accommodation to be had at the inns of Altamura 
is not worthy of the city. We spent a wretched night 
there, and were glad to go on at nine o'clock the next 
morning to Gravina. 



256 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Gravina, a walled city of some 18,000 souls, stands 
over a bare ravine crossed by a lofty double bridge. 
In the tufa of this burrone are innumerable caves where 
the Greek monks of old found refuge. Of the same origin 
is the church of S. Michele, a huge cavern, the walls and 
piUars of which have been excavated from the tufa. 

Gravina, however, is chiefly worth a visit for the sake 
of its tremendous ruined Castello, a building restored from 
time to time, but dating originally from the reign of 
Frederick 11, and for the remarkable baroque church of 
S. Maria delle Grazie, near the station. This church has 
an amazing fa9ade, blazoned upon which over its beautiful 
rose window we see an immense heraldic eagle, while below 
are the three towers of Castile. A few other buildings in 
the town are worth notice, especially the old Palazzo 
Orsini, to which family Altamura belonged in the fifteenth 
century. 

From Gravina we went on through Spinazzola and 
Palazzo to Venosa, in the Basilicata, Horace's Venusia — 
" A little town I may not name in verse, but I can easily 
describe it : here is sold water, the commonest of all things, 
but the bread is so excellent that the traveller who knows 
the road carries it on his shoulder a stage further. ..." 
This is a most picturesque place, largely built of ancient 
materials covered with Roman inscriptions, some two 
miles from the railway, standing high over a wide ravine 
under the distant peaks of Monte Vulture, and crowned 
by its ancient abbey church and fifteenth-century castle. 
Here Horace was born on December 8, 65 B.C., the son 
of a freedman who possessed a small property here and 
filled the office of collector, and devoted his whole leisure 
to the education of his son, whom, when about twelve years 
old, he carried to Rome. The fabulous, though ancient 
Casa di Orazio stands upon the road to Venosa from the 
station. But it was not altogether for Horace's sake we had 
come to Venosa, but rather for that of Robert Guiscard, 
who with his first wife, Alterada, the mother of Bohemund, 



VENOSA 257 

whom he divorced and who long outhved him, lies in the 
monastic church of S. Trinita built by him in 1059 l^-^^g^ly 
with the stones of the old Roman amphitheatre and other 
ancient debris covered with inscriptions. There the great 
man lies in the silence of this country place, within the 
shadow of these tremendous mountains. 

I protest that in spite of one's childhood, full of Horace, 
it is not of the little Roman poet, but of that great Norman 
soldier, one thinks in Venosa, as one passes about its 
picturesque ways from the ruined and unfinished Cluniac 
church to S. Trinita and up to the fifteenth- century Castle 
of Piero del Balzo. 

That unfinished church was begun by Robert Guiscard 
in 1065 as a mausoleum for his house. The plan is wholly 
French, and was indeed designed by a monk of the Cluniac 
priory of Paray le Monial ; no Italian architect could 
have conceived it at that time. But when Robert died 
it was unfinished, and it was never afterwards completed. 
It is now a sort of garden full of vines and fig trees. It 
is evident that Robert meant it to take the place of the 
Trinita before which it stands, and that upon its completion 
that church would have been destroyed, as happened in 
fact at Winchester and Wells. It is interesting to see the 
Norman methods actually in course of operation as we 
may do here, for time has in this far place preserved them 
as Robert left them in the midst of his work, even as the 
ashes of Vesuvius have preserved for us the Pompeii of the 
first century. And so it is that Robert Guiscard and his 
first wife — she whom he repudiated for political reasons, 
though he seems to have loved her — and Drogon, his elder 
half-brother, lie in the rude old church of S. Trinita instead 
of in the glorious Norman church he designed to hold his 
tomb, and those of all his house. 

This Benedictine church, which has been restored so often, 

and indeed wholly transformed, remained with the monks 

throughout Norman times ; but Charles of Anjou gave it to 

the Templars, and upon the supprQsdop of theij Qrd^r it 

17 



258 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

came into the hands of the Knights of S. John. Apart from 
the Norman, tombs, however, it has Uttle to offer us. The 
Norman possesses you in Venosa indeed to the exclusion 
of everything else. These little tough men, who were like 
steel when all the rest of us were like wood, haunt the 
mind, and at last because we could not escape them we 
set out about six o'clock one morning for Melfi, a journey 
of about two hours in the public automobile, where Pope 
Nicholas ii in 1059, moved by the great mind of Hilde- 
brand, invested Robert Guiscard their Count and leader, 
with the Duchies of Apulia and Calabria. 

For more than a quarter of a century, in the year 1041, 
the Norman had been fighting in the South in the pay of 
the Lombard Princes of Salerno and Capua, of the Dukes of 
Naples, or the Abbot of Monte Cassino. Already Rainulf 
had received and founded the fortress of Aversa, with which 
the Prince of Salerno had invested him, giving him the 
title of Count. But in Apulia, whither it will be remem- 
bered they had first been called by Melo of Bari, the Normans 
had done nothing since their defeat at Cannae in 1019. 
Their position thus seemed to be permanently a dependent 
one ; that it became on the contrary paramount through 
all the South was due to a new adventure. 

There was living at this time at Coutances in Normandy 
an old knight named Tancred de Hauteville, who had 
won fam.e in the wars of Robert, Duke of Normandy, the 
father of William the Conqueror. He lived in his castle 
of Hauteville surrounded by his family of twelve sons. 
Too poor to leave each a patrimony worthy of his birth, he 
encouraged three of them — ^William of the Iron Arm, 
Drogon, and Humphrey — to seek their fortunes in the South. 
These three young men set out with their companions 
and followers and entered the pay of Guaimar, Prince of 
Salerno ; but in the hope of booty they soon passed into 
the more adventurous service of the Byzantine Emperor, 
then suzerain of Apulia, Basilicata, and Calabria. At that 
time the Catapan Georgios Maniakis was preparing an 



MELFI 259 

expedition against the Arabs of Sicily. Often before the 
Byzantines had lured the Norman captains into their 
service, and Maniakis was following a well-worn precedent 
in engaging the three sons of Tancred. They and their 
Normans bore the brunt of the Sicilian campaign, William 
of the Iron Arm killing the Arab chief with his own hand ; 
but when they claimed their share of the spoil they were 
refused. Therefore they set sail, crossed the Straits of 
Messina, and in the depth of winter crossed the snow moun- 
tains of Calabria and Basilicata, entering Apulia at last 
triumphant. To their standard flocked every discontented 
interest in the South, Ardoin and the Lombards, the 
Normans of Aversa, and those in the service of Salerno 
and of Monte Cassino. They marched directly upon Melfi, 
then the greatest Greek stronghold in Apulia after Bari. 
Led by Ardoin, they appeared as liberators, offering free- 
dom. Upon Ardoin's appeal the gates were opened to 
them and they were received in triumph. Henceforth 
they possessed an almost impregnable fortress in the heart 
of the South. Their audacious adventure had succeeded ; 
in truth they had that day founded a kingdom. 

Melfi indeed was not alone in opening her gates ; her 
example was soon followed by the greater part of the 
neighbouring towns, and when at length the Greeks ap- 
peared to turn them out, the Greeks were broken. With 
their amazing success, however, discord appeared among 
them. Ardoin, without whom they could not have suc- 
ceeded, was a patriotic Lombard who wished to re-establish 
the independence of his people and to reconstitute in 
Apulia a Lombard principality similar to those of Capua 
and Salerno. This, of course, did not chime with the 
Norman plans. They had formed the very front of victory, 
had p)aid for it often dearly enough, and now in possession 
of the country they determined to keep it. William, 
therefore, broke with Ardoin, and thenceforth acted as a 
conqueror. In 1043 the Normans met at Melfi and 
divided their conquest. Each of their twelve counts 



26o NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

became the lord of a city, while the knights held each a 
castle in fief. They elected as their chief and lord William 
of the Iron Arm, who was proclaimed " Count of the Nor- 
mans in Apulia," and Melfi became his capital. 

But the feudal system, as we know, did not admit of 
possession without an overlord, one held always from a 
superior, and therefore the Normans, if their government 
was to be legal and enduring, needed such moral support 
to face the Greeks, who were already concentrating all 
their efforts against them. So the Normans sought 
a suzerain and a lord. In 1043 we see them turn to 
Guaimar of Salerno, in 1047 to the Emperor Henry 11, 
in 1053 to Pope Leo ix ; but their position remained pre- 
carious. 

In 1047 William of the Iron Arm died, and his brother 
Drogon was elected in his place ; but he was assassinated 
in 1 05 1 at Montolio, this being the first sign of a vast 
conspiracy of Lombards and Greeks against the Normans 
in which many perished. Humphrey was elected to fill 
Drogon's place, and, having buried his brother at Venosa, 
he re-established for a time the Norman name by his great 
victory at Civita ; but a few^ years later the revolution 
broke out again, this time against Robert Guiscard, the 
sixth son of Tancred de Hauteville, who in 1047, upon the 
death of William, had joined his half-brother in the South, 
and in 1059, upon the death of Humphrey, was elected Count 
in prejudice of the latter's children, for he was a great 
soldier. 

The election of Robert Guiscard, however, divided the 
Normans against themselves at the very moment when the 
Emperors of the East and West had joined together with 
the Pope against them, while all Apulia was in insurrection. 
The Norman power in the South seemed about to collapse ; 
that it did not do so we owe to the genius of Hildebrand. 

The mighty figure of the son of the carpenter of Soana 
in Tuscany, a Cluniac monk, later a Cardinal, and finally 
Pope under the title of Gregory vii, towered over all that 



MELFI 261 

world of the eleventh century. Already as Cardinal under 
Nicholas 11 he directed the policy of the Papacy. To 
realize his dream of emancipating the Papacy from the 
supremacy of the Empire he needed a miHtary power at 
his elbow. He saw that the Normans of Apulia alone 
were able thus to arm him, and in a moment he changed 
the direction of the whole Papal policy. Entering into 
secret negotiations with Robert Guiscard in the beginning 
of 1059, ^^ went in person to Melfi, where he held a council 
with the object of reconciling the Normans with the Church, 
and there drew up the articles which for many centuries 
formed the basis of political law in the South. Under his 
direction Nicholas 11 gave full absolution to the Normans, 
accorded Robert the title of Hereditary Duke of Apulia 
and Calabria, with Pontifical Investiture of all the lands 
held in these provinces, and full authorization to take 
what was not yet taken from the Greeks and Lombards 
and Arabs in Italy and Sicily. In return Robert Guiscard 
pledged himself and his successors as lieges of the Roman 
Church, engaged to pay an annual tribute to the Holy See, 
and to fight for the Church whenever called upon. And 
thus two birds were killed with one stone ; for the Papal 
Investiture gave the Normans the legal and moral position 
they had hitherto lacked against the claims of Lombards, 
Greeks, and Arabs, and was equally powerful against the 
claims of the sons of Humphrey. The first was confirmed 
when in 1060 the Greeks threatened the whole country 
with the most dangerous invasion that the Normans had 
yet had to meet ; it was utterly defeated, and Robert 
proceeded to new victories. The second never again 
lifted up its head. 

But with the extension of the power of Robert Guiscard 
Melfi was deposed from its high estate. When the Norman 
found himself in possession of Salerno he there established 
his capital, but Melfi, nevertheless, did not lose its im- 
portance all at once. In 1089 Urban 11 assembled there 
a Council, and Robert's successor, Roger, not only resided 



262 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

in, but embellished, the city, which remained a great place 
and became a favourite summer residence of Frederick ii. 
There indeed in 1231 the Emperor promulgated his famous 
code of laws compiled by his Chancellor, Pietro delle Vigne. 

As we see it to-day, however, Melfi recalls these her 
great days far less than might be expected. The city 
stands under lonely Monte Vulture, some 2000 feet 
above the sea, and boasts of some 13,000 inhabitants. It 
was in our father's time far more picturesque than it is 
to-day, for the earthquake of 1851 destroyed the greater 
part of the city. The mighty, if ruined, castle of the 
Normans, however, remains for the most part a work of 
the eleventh century, though disfigured by spoliation, 
ruin, and additions. It was here Drogon and Humphrey 
ruled, here Robert Guiscard imprisoned his first wife 
Alberade, when he repudiated her to marry for political 
reasons the sister of the Prince of Salerno. Little, however, 
of the twelfth-century Cathedral is left to us, though we 
may still see there in strange and fiery mosaic the heraldic 
lions of the Normans ; but the ramparts of the town are 
but fragmentary, and only one of the gates, of the time 
of Frederick 11, the Porta Venosa, remains. Indeed, the 
most interesting and the most beautiful thing left to us 
in Melfi has nothing to do with the Normans. It is a 
lovely antique sarcophagus, now in the Municipio, .with 
splendid reliefs all about it, an almost unique treasure 
which, according to Lenormant, can scarcely be matched 
in Rome itself. 

Altogether Melfi was disappointing ; picturesque as its 
situation is, under the pyramidal cones of Monte Vulture, 
it is lacking in beauty, and, were it not for the great scene 
which took place there in the eleventh century, it would 
not be worth a visit. 

From Melfi we returned by automobile to Venosa, and 
thence set out by train, passing again through Spinazzola 
to Minervino and Canosa. Minervino has nothing to 
offer the traveller save its wonderful situation more than 



CANOSA 263 

1200 feet over the sea — it is known as the Balcone delle 
Puglie — its old towered walls and Castello ; but a man 
might spend a week in Canosa without exhausting its 
interest. 

Canosa stands on the northern slope of the hills, to the 
south of the valley of the Ofanto. This river, the ancient 
Aufidus, is the principal river of Apulia, and is peculiar 
in this, that it traverses almost the whole breadth of the 
peninsula, rising not twenty-five miles from Salerno on 
the Tyrrhene, and flowing into the Adriatic Sea. It is 
in winter and spring still the violent and impetuous stream 
of which Horace speaks — 

Dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus 
Et qua pauper aquae Daunas agrestium 
Regnavit populomm ex humili potens 
Princeps Aeolium carmen ad Italos 
Deduxisse modos. 

But in summer its wide bed seems but another " trat- 
turo," a vast, bare sheep-walk with the hke of which this 
country is so often traversed, and we can therefore well 
understand Silius It aliens when, in describing the battle 
of Cannae, he speaks of the " stagnant Aufidus." 

Canusium, situated upon the low hills to the south of 
this stream, is only 15 miles from Barletta and the sea by 
road, but the river in its many windings runs twice as far 
between the city and its mouth. It stood upon the high 
road between Beneventum and Brundusium. It was an 
Apulian city, and its first and indeed only great appearance 
in Roman history was after the victory of Hannibal at 
Cannae, seven miles away towards the sea, when, faithful as 
it was to Rome, it afforded a refuge for the broken remnants 
of the Roman army, recei^dng the fleeing troops with the 
utmost hospitality and kindness. It was a few years 
later the scene of a battle in which Sulla defeated Caius 
Norbanus ; but it never played a great part in the history 
of the Republic except upon the occasion I have mentioned, 
perhaps chiefly on account of its scarcity of water, though 



264 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

it stood upon the greatest river of Apulia. This mis- 
fortune was remedied by Herodus Atticus, who built the 
great aqueduct, some remains of which we may still see. 

In the Dark Ages Canosa suffered severely from the 
Lombards and Saracens, to whom and to the Normans it 
owes nevertheless almost all that to-day makes it worth a 
visit. 

The city we see is, as I have said, set upon a low hill. 
This was probably the acropolis of the ancient city whose 
vast walls are spoken of by Strabo, and whose remains 
here and there we may still find, as well as the meagre 
ruins of a large amphitheatre and a Roman gate or 
Triumphal Arch, Porta Var reuse, beside the Cerignola road, 
along which, farther on, we come to the Roman bridge over 
the Of an to. But the real delight of Canosa is the mediaeval 
city, the Castello, the Cathedral of S. Sabino and its 
treasures, among which is the tomb of Bohemund. 

At a first glance the Cathedral seems to be much less 
interesting — indeed, a much later building than in fact it is. 
But presently one discovers that this great church is a 
Byzanto-Norman work of the eleventh century under 
five domes, the old pavement now several feet below the 
level of the street. 

Within are several old columns, a fine crypt with the 
choir above it, where stands supported by two elephants 
the glorious episcopal chair made by Romualdus in the end 
of the eleventh century, carved with eagles and various 
bands of ornament, and duly inscribed. In the nave, just 
without the sanctuary, is a splendid pulpit of the twelfth 
century, one of the finest works of the time left to us in 
Apulia. 

But after all the greatest wonder the church can boast 
is the tomb of Bohemund. This is in a south court, reached 
from the south aisle. It is a curiously Oriental mausoleum 
sadly broken and damaged, having bronze doors by 
Ruggero of Melfi. 

It will be remembered that upon the death of Robert 



CANNiE 265 

Guiscard, Roger and Bohemund, his two sons, both claimed 
to succeed him. It was Pope Urban 11 and Hildebrand who 
supported Roger, though he was the younger, in the 
possession of the Duchy of ApuHa and Calabria, consti- 
tuting the Terra d'Otranto into a principality for Bohe- 
mund, whose capital was Lecce. 

This arrangement was secured by the first Crusade, 
which called Bohemund out of Italy and in which he be- 
came Prince of Antioch and was twice taken prisoner, 
only returning to Apulia to raise men and money. It was 
upon his second return that he died in mo, and was buried 
not in his principality, but here at Canosa, and in a fashion 
almost Oriental, in a tomb that has no fellow in Europe — 
a vast rectangular cella surmounted by a pyramid upon 
which is set an octagonal drum supporting a slender 
cupola. All is of white marble closed by bronze gates, 
altogether Byzantine, the work of Ruggero of Melfi or, as 
Leiiormant claims, of Amalfi.^ They bear a long and 
pompous Latin inscription. Within lie the disturbed 
bones of him of whom his mother boasts still at Venosa — 

Guiscardi conjux Alberada hac conditur area 
Si genitum quares, hunc Canusium habet. 

From Canosa along the line to Barletta, which follows 
the valley of the Ofanto, the road going more directly 
over the rolling low hills, it is but a few miles to the great 
battlefield of Cannae, the third and last of the great victories 
of Hannibal, won upon August 2, 216 B.C. 

Hannibal, it seems, had seized Cannae in the early summer. 
The town had been destroyed in the previous year, but the 
citadel remained, and there the Romans had large stores, 
all of which fell into the Carthaginians' hands. Making 
his camp in the neighbourhood, he occupied the citadel 
of Cannae and marked the advance of the Roman generals, 

1 The gates are not at all like those at Amalfi or indeed any others 
known to us. They are not properly of bronze, but consist of bronze 
plates upon wooden gates. 



266 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Paulus and Varro. These had received orders to risk a 
general engagement. They came up on the south side of 
the Aufidus, the same side as that of the town, and there 
estabhshed a large camp, at the same time building a 
smaller camp to the north of the now stagnant stream. 
Upon August 2, Varro crossed the river from the larger 
camp and, joining his forces with those in the smaller 
encampment, faced about south to meet the enemy, who 
crossed the river to find him. The battle was thus fought 
upon the north bank of the river, where, by Cannae, it bends 
suddenly southward, forming a great peninsula thrusting 
due south. The Roman force consisted of some 80,000 
foot, half burgesses, half allies, and some 6000 cavalry, only 
2000 of which were burgesses. Hannibal, on the contrary, 
while he had 10,000 cavalry, had but 40,000 foot. As it 
happened, the scene of the fight conferred upon him an 
advantage which his genius knew how to use ; the plain 
of Apulia was exactly fitted to the use of cavalry, and it 
was the ever-charging cavalry which broke the Romans. 
They tried to flee, but could not, quarter was not granted 
them ; they were annihilated. Even a large part of the 
ten thousand they had left to garrison their camp was 
made prisoner ; only a few thousand escaped to Canusium. 
Varro, however, rode into Venusia, and was not ashamed 
to survive. Hannibal lost only 6000 men, but 4000 
of these were Gauls. It was perhaps for him a dearer 
victory than he knew, or we have realized. Yet at evening 
it must have seemed as though an end had been made of 
Rome. 

In the same way, men must have thought, though with 
far more excuse, that an end had been made of the Norman 
adventure when in the same field the Byzantines broke 
those warriors whom Melo had brought into the South in 
1019 — how falsely in both cases we know and rejoice 
to remember. 



XXI 

LE TAVOLIERE— FOGGIA, TROIA, LUCERA 

FROM Barletta one morning we started by train for 
Foggia, the capital of the great plain of Apulia, the 
Tavoliere delle Puglie, the vast tableland which is the third 
and most northern division of Apulia, once a huge sheep 
pasture supporting not less than four and a half million 
sheep and still boasting flocks which altogether number 
some half a million. These flocks come down from the 
highlands in October along the tratturi or broad sheep-walks 
that are so noticeable a feature of this tableland, which 
grows little else but grass and is quite empty of trees since 
its soil is but thinly strewn over the limestone rock which 
everywhere brutally protrudes from it. 

As one comes out of Barletta one looks northward across 
this vast and fiat country to the abrupt heights of the great 
Promontory of Gargano. Passing Trinitapoli and Ortanova 
on the southern edge of this plain, the line proceeds right 
across it to Foggia in its midst, passing indeed, and that 
at some distance, but one town of any interest on the 
way — Cerignola — upon the higher ground to the south. 
This is one of the most ancient towns in Apulia, though 
to look upon it to-day one might think it a creation of 
our own time, even the Cathedral being an entirely modem 
building — indeed, in course of construction. But in the 
principal street is an ancient Roman milestone marking 
the eighty-first mile from Brindisi, and certain ruins 
remain also of the mediaeval Castle. The place is scarcely 

worth a visit, but that it bears witness to the transforma- 

267 



268 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

tion of all this country by modem methods of agriculture 
which are fast turning the better and higher parts of this 
ancient pasture land into vineyards and olive planta- 
tions. 

Foggia itself, the centre and capital of all this country, 
is a large and dirty town of low white houses very Oriental 
in appearance, having often terraces upon their roofs, 
which has preserved very few memories of her long history 
chiefly owing to the fact that she has so often been destroyed 
by earthquake, more especially in 1731. 

The curiously parvenu-looking city was the successor of 
Arpi, a few vestiges of whose ruins remain about five miles 
to the north, which in ancient times was the capital of all 
this country. The period of its destruction, like the cause 
of it, is hidden from us, but that Foggia was its daughter 
we cannot doubt. She appears first under the domination 
of the Byzantines, then of the Saracens, and then of the 
Normans, under whom and under the Hohenstaufen she 
reached her greatest splendour, a major nodal point in all 
the strategy of the various wars of the South, dominating 
all the southern roads as she does to-day the railways 
of Apulia, herself the great central market of these vast 
pastures. For these reasons Frederick 11 made the city 
his headquarters, building there and apparently himself 
designing a noble palace, all trace of which save an arch, 
now part of a private house and a great well, has vanished. 
Upon a stone from the fa9ade of the palace now built into 
the arch we read three inscriptions, the first of which 
runs — 

HOC FIERI JUSSIT FREDERICUS CESAR UT URBS SIT 
FOGGIA REGALIS SEDES INCLITA IMPERIALIS. 

The second gives us the name of the architect, while 
suggesting that the design was the Emperor's — 

SIC CESAR FIERI JUSSIT OPUS ISTUM PROTO 

(magister) bartholomeus sic construxit lllud. 



LE TAVOLIERE 269 

In the third we find the date — 

A. AB INCARNATIONE MCCXXIII M JUNII XI IND 

R. DNON. FREDERICO IMPERATORE R. SEP. AUG A III ET 

REGE SICILIE A XXVI HOC OPUS FELICITER INCEPTUM. 

The palace thus begun in 1223 and finished in 1225 
became a favourite residence with the Emperor ; not a 
year passed but he was in residence there, and there in 
1241 died his third wife, Isabel of England, who lies in the 
crypt of the Cathedral of Andria beside Frederick's 
second wife, lolanthe. 

But the really interesting thing about this palace is 
the fact that if the Emperor designed it, as he may well 
have done, and as the inscription certainly suggests he 
did, it was built by Bartolommeo da Foggia, who was 
the father of that Nicolao who in 1272 built the wonderful 
ambone of Ravello, and whose work we almost certainly 
find again in the crypt of the Cathedral here, sadly spoilt 
though the whole building is. In the capitals of those 
four columns of red marble there we surely see the very 
hand of the builder of the Ravello ambone. As for the 
Cathedral itself, only the fagade remains of the Norman 
church of 1179. 

Foggia is said to derive its name from the Foreae, or 
fosse di grano, where the citizens stored their grain grown 
once, as it will be again, upon the great plains in the midst 
of which the city stands. Perhaps the most interesting, 
certainly the most curious, sight in Foggia is the vast 
Piazza delle Fosse where the grain is still stored. 

The three cities which stand on the last of the high 
land on the verge of the plain to the west of Foggia are 
all of them of considerable interest. The most southern 
of these, Troia, some fifteen miles from Foggia, lies upon 
the top of a long roll of bare down on the site of the 
ancient Apulian city of JEcs^, where Fabius built his 
camp when he was carefully following Hannibal after 
Trasimeno. The Carthaginians had marched on Apulia 



270 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

hoping to find allies and to open communications again 
with Carthage. In both they were successful, and we 
read that in 216 B.C., the year after the battle of Cannae, 
yEcae opened her gates to them to be retaken two years 
later by the Romans. We know nothing more of JEc3d 
save that it was utterly destroyed during the barbarian 
invasions of the fifth century, and was a mere ruin when 
in 1018 Basilios Bojoannis, perhaps the greatest Byzantine 
after the time of Belisarius and Narses that ever appeared 
in Italy, was Catapan at Bari. His object was to oppose 
the progress of Melo and the Normans whom he had 
brought into the South. With this object he built on 
the site of ^cse a new town, which not without a memory 
of Latin traditions and Greek poetry he called Troia. 
This he strongly fortified, established there a bishopric, 
and filled it with Byzantines. At the same time he called 
to his standard for the defence of the place certain Norman 
knights who had been in the service of the Count of 
Ariano. This band entered Troia in 1019 to oppose 
their compatriots. Beaten at Cannae, Melo and the 
Norman chief quitted Italy to call the Emperor Henry ii 
to their aid against the Byzantines. In this they were 
successful. Henry 11 appeared, laid siege to Troia, but 
could not take it. For shame he would not raise the 
siege however, till, reading his mind, it obtained what it 
desired by strategy. Out of the city came a procession 
of children led by a monk bearing a cross and singing 
K5n:ie Eleison, and thus imploring mercy. The Emperor 
was moved, and seized the opportunity to receive the 
nominal surrender of the city, which he could not take 
by force. 

In 1059 Robert Guiscard, however, appeared before 
Troia, with which the Pope had invested him at the 
Council of Melfi. He was not at first successful, but 
gained possession of the place in the following year, and 
there built a great Castello to hold it. In 1097 Troia 
was destroyed, or almost destroyed, by fire, but was quickly 



TROIA 271 

rebuilt and soon became a very notable and prosperous 
place. When Duke William came to die in 11 27 the 
prosperity of the Troians encouraged them to regain 
something of their lost independence. But though the 
Pope was ready to accord them much of their desire, 
Roger presently appeared, and after laying siege to Troia 
was admitted. 

With the passing of the Normans, however, Troia began 
to decline. Frederick preferred Foggia and Lucera, and 
by the time the Angevins were firmly seated in the 
Kingdom Troia, whose fortifications they had overthrown, 
was little more than a small provincial city, no longer 
fortified. 

It is this sudden decline of Troia which has conserved 
for us the considerable and interesting buildings which 
the town still possesses. 

The earliest building in the city is the church of S. 
Basilio, a small plain erection without exterior ornament 
in the form of a Latin cross with a small apse and a 
Byzantine cupola over the transepts. This was the first 
cathedral, and was built in the eleventh century. 

The present Cathedral of S. Maria Assunta is a very 
different affair. This is one of the noblest buildings 
in all the Capitanata. Its noble fagade, reached by a 
double flight of steps from the Piazza, belongs in its lower 
part to the late eleventh century, while its upper part, with 
its splendid rose window, has been at least restored in the 
thirteenth. Within we see a basilica of three naves with 
a single apse, and before the choir a long transept, all 
unfortunately vilely painted and spoilt in 1831. The 
church as a whole, however, was begun in 1093. In 1030 
Pope John xix had accorded to the bishopric of Troia the 
privilege of depending only upon the Holy See. From that 
time the people of Troia desired to build a new cathedral 
worthy of their privileges^ and in 1093 the Bishop began 
the work. But the true builder of the Cathedral of Troia 
was not this man, but GuiUaume Bigot, his successQrj a 



272 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Norman who gave largely of his own wealth and obtained 
more from the Duke William. It is to Bishop Guillaume 
that really all that is finest in the church is due — the glorious 
fagade, the great doors of bronze by Oderisus of Benevento ; 
but the ambone in the nave comes from the old cathedral 
S. Basilic. 

No one who comes to Foggia should omit to visit Troia ; 
nor should he who sees Troia fail to visit Lucera, which lies 
not much more than twelve miles due west of Foggia and 
not quite so far north of Troia. 

If Troia is full of the Norman, Lucera remembers only 
Frederick of Hohenstaufen and his Saracens. Indeed, 
Lucera, which stands some 700 feet over the arid 
plain under its ruined castle on an island of hills, has by 
far the most interesting history of any town in Capitanata. 
To begin with, its site, this island of hills with a steep 
escarpment north and west, sloping gently south and 
east, was designed by nature for a fortress of the first 
order, and from time immemorial indeed we see here a 
fortified town. No doubt it had played a great part in the 
history of Apulia before, in 326 B.C., during the Second 
Samnite War, the Samnites besieged the place, when in 
marching to relieve it the Romans were caught in the 
Caudine Forks, and Luceria, as it was then called, fell. But 
when at last the Romans established themselves in Luceria 
they not only understood its importance but found no 
more faithful city in all this country. Hannibal longed 
for it in vain, and the fact that it never came into his hands 
had a capital effect upon the war. We know little of 
Luceria thereafter during the Roman time ; Strabo tells 
us, indeed, that it was declining in importance in his day, 
but it survived the barbarian invasions, and was a rich 
town under the Lombards and one of their chief strongholds. 
But in 663 the Byzantine Emperor Constans 11 took it and 
almost entirely destroyed it, and so it remained in ruin for 
near six hundred years. 

It was indeed just a ruin that Frederick 11 found there in 



LUCERA 273 

1223, the year in which he built his palace in Foggia. He 
had just broken the revolted Saracens of Sicily, and thinking 
it imprudent to leave them in the Val di Mazzara, where 
they had such long traditions of independence and where 
they could so easily be succoured from Africa, and at the 
same time wishing to use their industry and strength, he 
decided to transplant them to Lucera, Girofalco, and 
Acerenza, but principally to Lucera, where he built a vast 
fortress in which they lived separate from the Christian 
population of the town, which, since that was but a ruin, 
must have been small. 

After a revolt in 1226 the Saracens accepted their fate, 
and soon became by far the most eagerly loyal of all the 
Emperor's subjects. Each and all of them were warriors, 
and during twenty years they formed the front and nucleus 
of Frederick's armies, and the fortress of Lucera, finished in 
1227, was his principal stronghold in the Adriatic provinces. 

It was natural that the Pope should always look with 
disapproval upon the presence of this Mohammedan force 
in Italy, though it is certain that the Normans employed 
a Saracen bodyguard long before Frederick's time. How- 
ever, this was a different thing ; and to satisfy the Pope, 
Frederick permitted the Franciscans to enter Lucera and 
to preach there — of course without success, for Frederick 
refused to assist in any way, nor would he offer any reward 
or advantage to those who became Christians, which to our 
day, as sceptical as Frederick, may seem but just, but 
to a Christian time and people sounded and sounds like 
treason. Frederick, however, looked for no reconciliation 
with the head of the Christian world ; and in his struggle 
with the Papacy he was only able to depend upon troops for 
whom ecclesiastical anathemas and excommunications had 
no meaning ; rather they felt that in fighting the Catholic 
Pontiff they did Allah service. Things, however, were not 
favouring Frederick, and in 1239 ^^ concentrated all his 
Saracens at Lucera, increased their numbers from Sicily, 
gave them — for they now numbered some 60,000 — all the 
18 



274 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

town, so that it came to be called Lucera Saracenorum, 
and himself went from Foggia to live among them like a 
Mohammedan, dressing like the " Sultan " of Lucera, as 
he was called, and providing himself with a rich and 
numerous harem guarded by eunuchs. This was the 
Christian Emperor, the hero of Protestant historians and 
all the enemies of the Catholic Church ! No wonder the 
Pope thundered ; but Frederick was safe in his harem, 
surrounded by troops who spat upon the Christ in whose 
name he had sworn to govern Christendom. 

After the Emperor's death, indeed, Innocent iv attempted 
to join the Saracen army to his cause, and even succeeded 
in buying its chief ; but the Arabs would not follow, and 
when Manfred fled to them they hailed him as king and 
won him his kingdom, when fortune forsook him, falling in 
thousands upon the field of Benevento. 

But when Manfred was no more the Saracens of Lucera 
submitted themselves to Charles of Anjou, though when 
Gonradin appeared they re- erected his standard, and Lucera 
became the hope of all the Ghibellines in the South. And 
when Conradin had failed and Charles again appeared 
before Lucera the Saracens refused to surrender the city 
and were only reduced by starvation. The town fell upon 
August 15, 1269, the Feast of the Assumption of the 
Blessed Virgin, in whose honour Charles built on the site 
of the principal mosque, which stood where of old had "been 
a cathedral, a great new church dedicated to S. Maria 
Assunta, giving to the city the new name of Lucera 
Chris tianorum. 

Charles, however, hoping to use the Saracens, did not 
then put them to death, nor even later when in 1271 they 
rebelled upon the false rumour of the return of Conradin. 
Instead he used them in his armies in Sicily and Albania, 
and in Lucera he placed a colony of Provencals. In spite 
of all the Pope could do, it was not till the year 1300, when 
Boniface viii sat on the throne of Peter and Charles 11 was 
king of Naples, that the Saracens were finally disposed of. 



LUCERA 275 

The year was a year of jubilee, and Charles ii resolved 
to have an auto-da-fe after his own heart. Without the 
smallest provocation on the part of the Saracens, he sent 
an army against Lucera under Giovanni Pipino da Barletta, 
took the town, and put every Saracen without exception, of 
both sexes, to the sword, only offering life in exchange for 
baptism. Very few consented to live. 

Then in 1302 the Cathedral of S. Maria Assunta was 
solemnly dedicated and the name of the city, still red with 
Saracen blood, was changed, though ineffectually, to that of 
Citta di S. Maria. It is difficult to decide which was the 
worse — the work of Frederick 11 in bringing the Saracens 
into Italy, or the work of Charles 11 in massacring them. 
The one was a crime against Europe, the other a crime 
against civilization ; both disgust us with their anarchy. 

Two things, and two things only, I think, remain worth 
seeing in Lucera — the Castello and the Cathedral. The 
Castello is a vast ruin within great towered walls, some 
900 metres round about, which occupies the summit of the 
hill, the old acropolis towards the west, a mile from and 
above the town. The walls follow exactly the escarp- 
ments of the hill except on the east towards the town, 
where they are reinforced by a vast ditch hewn in the rock. 
Twenty square towers of brick stand in the wall, reinforced, 
at the western angles, by two greater and higher polygonal 
towers and upon the south by two huge round towers of 
stone. Here too on the south is the principal entrance. 
Within stood till the eighteenth century the huge keep 
where Frederick dwelt and the chief of the Saracens ; and 
all about was built the Saracen city, the harem of Frederick, 
the mosques, and the little church of the Franciscans where 
Christ was offered half in fear as in a heathen country. 
All is now a heap of ruins, from which it is, I suppose, 
scarcely possible to reconstruct anything. 

Within the town of Lucera there stands the beautiful 
Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin, one of the loveliest Gothic 
churches in Italy, the work surely of a French master of the 



276 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

end of the thirteenth century, consecrated in 1303. 
Lenormant claims it as the work of Pierre d'Agincourt, 
whom Charles brought with him from France, and there 
seems no reason to doubt this conclusion. In any case, we 
have here one of the most remarkable Gothic works in 
Italy, a church which would not disgrace the He de France 
itself, while the pilasters of the nave, which surely come 
from the old cathedral, which was turned into a mosque by 
the Saracens are of verde-antico. 

It is delightful to find a church of S. Francesco still 
in Lucera, and especially since it is a charming work of 
the fourteenth century ; but neither this nor the cathedral, 
even for all its beauty, can keep us long in Lucera from 
the Castello. It is there our thoughts are fixed with 
the Emperor Frederick, who in more senses than one earned 
his title of Stupor Mundi. 

Standing there on the height looking north towards 
S. Severo one may descry the ruins of Castel Fiorentino 
where he died. Discouraged and broken at last, he 
stumbled into this hunting lodge, a sort of Castel del 
Monte, in December 1250. He had hoped to make 
Lucera, but could go no farther, and when he realized where 
he was, he knew that he would die there, for it had been fore- 
told him that death would find him " near the iron gate, 
in a place whose name forms the word flower." He had 
always thought of Florence when he remembered this, 
and for this reason had avoided the town ; for if he was a 
sceptic, he was certainly not on that account devoid of 
superstition. There, amid the friends life and his own 
cruelty had left him, he died upon 13th December, the Arch- 
bishop of Palermo giving him, perhaps unlawfully, the 
Last Sacraments of the Church he had rebelled against so 
long. The Guelfs assert that he died writhing and cursing 
in the grip of that devil who had driven him on so strange 
a road to so strange an end. The Ghibellines assert that 
he repented him of the evil he had done, and reconciled 
himself to God and man at last. It is impossible to believe 



LUCERA 277 

either Guelf or" Ghibelline. Most likely is it that he died 
as he had lived, sceptical to the last even of the dark into 
which he was passing, and anxious only as to the Empire 
and the Kingdom, the succession to which, through his own 
fault, was in jeopardy. 

Manfred, all accounts agree, was with him, who when his 
father was dead caused the body of the Emperor to be 
taken in great procession guarded by Saracens down the 
long roads of Apulia and Calabria and across the Straits to 
Sicily and Palermo, where he ordered these brief verses by 
one Trattano, a clerk, to be graved upon his sepulchre (so 
says Villani) — 

Si probitas sensus virtutum gratia census 

Nobilitas orti, possent resistere morti, 

Non foret extinctus Federicus, qui facet intus. 



XXII 

MANFREDONIA AND MONTE S. ANGELO 

THE way from Foggia to Manfredonia traverses what 
is, I suppose, the dullest and most melancholy part 
of the Tavoliere, the great plain of Apulia, and save for 
the spectacle of the isolated and half -deserted cathedral 
church of S. Maria Maggiore di Siponto, it is utterly undis- 
turbed in its monotonous loneliness. This curious build- 
ing stands just beyond the Lago Salso, the Lacus Pontanus 
of the ancients, a great salt lagoon only divided from the 
sea by a stretch of marsh. It is really a Byzantine building 
entirely built of ancient materials from the lost city of 
Sipontum, upon whose site it stands, which fell into utter 
decay upon the foundation of Manfredonia. The interior 
of this lonely sanctuary was rebuilt in the beginning of 
the sixteenth century by Cardinal Antonio del Monte, the 
Archbishop of Siponto, and by his nephew and successor, 
Cardinal Giovanni Maria del Monte, who became Pope 
JuUus III. 

The pavement is composed of ancient gravestones, but by 
far the most interesting thing in the church to-day is the 
vast crypt upheld by four huge round pillars. This, like 
the exterior of the building, was not touched in the sixteenth 
century, and it remains a work of the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries. To this time, too, belongs the portal of the 
church, which is among the finest works of its kind in all 
Apulia. It is supported by two columns of marble stand- 
ing upon crouching lions, and in the tympanum is a bas- 
relief. The church was consecrated in 1117 by Pope 



u 



MANFREDONIA 279 

Paschal 11, and served the ancient town of Sipontum, 
whose foundation was attributed to Diomed. In later 
ages it suffered much from earthquake, but, as I say, its 
final abandonment was brought about by the foundation 
of Manfredonia by Manfred in 1263. 

This undertaking, the foundation of a new city and port, 
was the result of much consultation with astrologers and 
sailors, who seem to have given excellent advice, for from 
the first the new city, which bore the name of the Ghibel- 
line hero, was a success. Geographically the new port 
might seem to have been a necessity, for it opened direct 
communications between the Imperial possessions in 
Epirus and the riches and strength of Apulia, and its 
position under the great height of Gargano rendered it 
the safest port on all this coast. Founded in 1263, in 
1265 Manfredonia was already built, and in that year the 
bishop and the inhabitants of Siponto were transferred 
to it. Manfred indeed seems to have designed it for his 
capital in Apulia, but all his plans came to nothing with 
his death in 1266, and though Charles i continued the 
construction of the port, which he ordered to be called 
Siponto Novello, hoping to efface from the memory of his 
new subjects the name of the vanquished hero of Bene- 
vento, Manfredonia remained a mere provincial town. 
We hear, however, of the splendour of the Cathedral to 
which the relics of S. Lorenzo were brought, but we have 
no means of judging its beauty, since it was utterly 
destroyed together with the greater part of the town in 
1620, when the Turks suddenly descended upon it, and 
scarce left anything behind them. All, indeed, that remains 
of Manfred's time is the old ramparts, now far too large, 
the splendid mole, and the half-ruined Castello at the base 
of it. 

Apart from these ancient and ruined works, Manfredonia 
is one of the wretchedest cities of Apulia. The inns are 
dirty, the food to be had there almost uneatable, and the 
whole city is at the mercy of the pilgrims wlio come in 



28o NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

thousands and thousands down from the Abruzzi to go 
up to the famous shrine of S. Michael, some few hours 
above Manfredonia, upon Monte S. Angelo. 

It was evening when we came into Manfredonia from 
Foggia to find it in the hands of the pilgrims, the rail- 
way station a pandemonium, and every wretched street 
thronged with them, men, women and children, in the 
picturesque peasant costumes of the Abruzzi, the moun- 
tain district to the north between the Apennines and 
the sea. To add to our misery, for the noise was such 
that it was impossible to hear oneself speak, as we came 
over the plain into Manfredonia at evening a hurricane 
of wind arose suddenly over the Tavoliere, as often happens 
in this wild and half-desolate country ; the bright sea 
was white with the wind and angrily dashing itself along 
the low southern shore and about the vast and lofty head- 
land, while on all the roads huge clouds of dust arose, 
towering high into the blinded sky. 

As well as we could, led by a beggar, we pushed our 
way to the miserable house in the wretched main street 
which did duty for the inn. A great room was shown us, 
in which stood a vast bridal bed curiously adorned, while 
all about the room were little shrines and altars, holy 
pictures of all the Madonnas, musty branches of blessed 
olive. Great candles from some distant Candlemas were 
hanging by their looped wicks from nails in the wall, and 
upon what might have been the dressing-table stood a 
sort of sanctuary in silver paper, wax, and spangles, where 
sat Madonna enthroned with her little Son under a glass 
shade, the Early Victorian work of Catholic Italy. All 
and everything, bed and trinkets, were musty and dirty, 
and the room smelt as though the window had not been 
opened for years. Nor was this surprising, for when we 
succeeded in opening the window, which had been nailed 
up and was heavily draped, we found that it only opened 
upon a dark well, the wall of which was not a yard from 
the sill. In this room we were to pass the horrible night. 



MANFREDONIA 281 

I cannot hope to describe the old woman who owned 
this place and was our hostess. Only the pen of Dickens 
could do her justice. She was something between Mrs. 
Gamp and Juliet's nurse. Her life apparently had been 
spent in pilgrimages, of which the litter in the room was the 
spoil. She had been to Rome, to Assisi, to Loreto and 
to Pompeii, where of late a very famous shrine of Our Lady 
has been established. She was so dirty that it was horrible 
to go near her, but so full of laughter and gaiety that for 
all her seventy years it was a pleasure to hear her. Nor 
was she without wit, and in her curiously simple way 
extraordinarily cunning. She let us her room and con- 
sented to put up two more beds. We then left her to get 
something to eat in the town. 

By this time it was quite dark and all the ways were 
thronged with the pilgrims, orderly now in procession, 
passing in two long lines on either side the narrow ways, 
lighted candles in their hands, lifting up their voices in the 
long-drawn-out, whining, hoarse litanies that always accom- 
pany such processions — 

Sancta Maria, 

Ora pro nobis. 
Sancta Dei Gk^netrix, 

Ora pro nobis. 
Sancta Virgo Virginum, 

Ora pro nobis. 
Sancte Michael, 

Ora pro nobis. 
Sancte Gabriel, 

Ora pro nobis. 
Sancte Raphael, 

Ora pro nobis. 
Omnes Sancti AngeH et ArchangeM, 

Orate pro nobis. 

We watched them pass up the dimly lighted street 
bright ¥/ith their tapers, hundred after hundred. Slowly 
they went by it seemed for hours, and presently as we made 



282 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

our way out beyond the town we saw them above us in a 
long and winding ribbon of sparkling light climbing the 
mountain side, their sad and wailing song coming to us 
faintly out of the vastness of the dark with a strange appeal 
almost pitiful that filled the heart with tears. By what a 
road they went in the darkness we were to learn on the 
following day. And so, when we had watched them for a 
time, we hurried away to find a restaurant. 

It would be impossible to find in a Tuscan village a place 
so wretched as the restaurant of Manfredonia. It was full 
of flies, even at night, even in the spring ; chairs, tables, 
plates, glasses, forks, and spoons, all were filthy, and we 
could eat scarcely anything that it could provide : even 
the omelette was rancid because of the bad oil and the 
unclean way in which it had been made ; the biscuits were 
soft with age and damp, and the chocolate was so stale 
that it had gone sour. After a struggle to get something 
inside us, we returned to the inn, where we found our hostess 
in a great to-do. 

It seemed that within our great room was another, the 
only approach to which was through that we had taken. 
So it was, and every day but this day in all the year it 
would have made no matter ; but as it was, two ladies, 
young and charming, had arrived soon after we had gone 
out, wanted the room, but could not have it because there 
were we between them and the possible exit. What to 
do ? Eh, Santa Maria, che vuole ? We looked at the old 
woman, we looked at the various shrines, the holy pictures, 
the dusty olive-branches of some long-ago Palm Sunday, 
the candles that awaited her latter end. Could it be that 
so religious a person — one who had made so many pil- 
grimages — was capable of deceit ? These two ladies young 
and beautiful ? . . . But ours had been the last train 
reaching Manfredonia that day. 

Then the most Italianate, who, yet remains by far the 
most fundamentally English of us all, envisaging both our 
hostess and the situation, expounded to her astonished 



MANFREDONIA 283 

intelligence that we did not mind. " Look you, Signora," 
says he, " if it be that these ladies think they incommode 
us, it is not so, not at all. Let them have the room — we 
do not mind.'' 

Let it be noted that true simplicity will often out-face 
the devil. Do not resist temptation, flee from it. Better 
it is to drop a stone if you would be rid of it than to fling 
it far from you. So here : our hostess gasped ; but 
alas ! she was not defeated, only repulsed. She sought to 
explain, and warming to her work, became as eloquent and 
almost as explicit as Juliet's nurse. Of course the Signori 
would not mind ; were they not young — and these ladies, 
were they not young too, and beautiful ? . . . But with 
respect it was they who minded . . . and . . . she was 
an honest woman. Had she not tried it all ways ? If we 
slept here and the ladies within, the}^ must come through 
our apartment ; if they slept here and we within, we must 
come through their apartment. Neither v/as to be so 
much as thought of . . . and there was no lock to the door 
. . . and so she must lose her money . . . she nmst. 
It was hard, but the saints would reward her. 

Then really without shame we did what was expected : 
we took both rooms for the night. That made all well, 
and more especially because there were no ladies, neither 
young and beautiful nor old and ugly — no ladies at all. 
Beside the pilgrims we were the only visitors in Monfre- 
donia that night. We slept ... I cannot say we slept ; 
we tossed through the night while we were devoured, and 
were so glad of the morning that we refrained from com- 
plaint : we paid and departed. 

It was scarcely four o'clock when we set out, and so 
bitterly cold because of the wind which had not much 
abated that we had all we could do to keep warm in the 
little carriage we had ordered overnight. The road lay 
before us northward and east, rising a little all the way and 
smothered in dust, till after some five miles it began to 
climb the great mountain of S. Angelo, now right above us. 



284 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

Here we left the road and the carriage for the pilgrims' 
way, a mere rock-hewn track about a yard wide that wound 
far more steeply than the road up the mountain side. 
Before we left the road for good, however, we passed more 
than one shrine by the wayside where a crowd of pilgrims 
were gathered on their way down the mountain to pray 
before a crucifix led by a priest : they were very picturesque 
in their curious costumes seen thus beside the whiteness 
of the road, the bare whiteness of the mountain, and the 
little shrine itself. We saluted them and passed upwards. 
Half-way too, or rather less, we passed a curious towered 
house, once an inn. Then we left the road for good, only 
crossing it now and again on our steep way upward by 
the path we found so hard even in the daylight, but which 
the pilgrims had used in the dark, singing as they went. 

After some four hours we came into the little town 
that has grown up here some 2500 feet over the sea about 
the vast cavern sacred to S. Michael the Archangel. This 
cave, now entirely surrounded by a great church, is at the 
far end of the town. Surrounded by a courtyard closed 
by a grille, on the right is a lofty campanile octagonal in 
form, built in 1274 by Charles of Anjou, who considered 
that he owed his victory at Benevento to the intervention 
of the Archangel. At the bottom of the courtyard under 
a portico of 1295 is the entry to the church, a great flight 
of fifty-five steps cut in the rock which leads down to 
a small atrium before the doors of the sanctuary. The 
church itself consists of a nave set across the cavern, in the 
depth of which is the choir with the altar right at the end 
under the rock. This nave is another work of Charles of 
Anjou' s, and was built in 1274. The church is large and 
impressive, dark and very damp, for a spring of water 
continually rises within to the left of the altar, upon which 
stands the statue of S. Michael attributed, without good 
reason, to Michelangelo. The whole is paved with red and 
white marble. 

It is not easy to see this curious church when it is full 







A \VAYSIDE SHRINE, MONTE S. ANGELO 



•^ 




THE pilgrim's WAY, MONTE S. ANGELO 



MONTE S. ANGELO 285 

of a crowd of pilgrims, through which it is almost impos- 
sible to push one's way, as upon the morning we came to it. 
The noise, the confusion, and the awful stench of humanity 
had appalled us already in the outer court. The way 
down the great flight of steps was as bad, for it was lined 
with the lame, the maimed, and the afflicted, all of whom 
exhibited their wounds with a dreadful and almost brutal 
insistence which was more than one could bear. But 
the scene in the church itself beggars description. The 
mere noise was incredible. Mass was being sung at the 
high altar, but all around us other devotions were in 
progress, litanies and prayers were being chanted, and 
moans and groans rising on all sides. It was impossible 
to remain for long. Our curiosity seemed more shameful 
than any superstition, nor was it at its strongest strong 
enough to drive us through so terrible a mass of wretched- 
ness, misery, and dirt. We retreated, only lingering a 
little in the atrium at the foot of the steps to examine 
the marvellous bronze doors of the sanctuary with their 
twenty-four compartments in which are depicted scenes 
from the Old and New Testaments, the Archangels Michael 
and Raphael, and various other stories. These gates, which 
are certainly among the most curious to be found here in 
the South, were made in Constantinojole and presented to 
the church by the Pontaleone of Amalfi. in 1076. 

But what is this shrine of S. Michael which is still able 
to attract to itself something of the amazing enthusiasm 
that so many sanctuaries enjoyed in the Middle Age, but 
that, save at Lourdes and to a lesser degree at Loreto, is 
so rare to-day ? 

The Grotto of S. Michael upon Monte Gargano is the 
oldest shrine of the Archangel in the West. Its story 
is well told by Voragine in The Golden Legend : '' The appari- 
tion of this angel is manifold. The first was when he 
appeared in the Mount of Gargon. This mountain is in 
[the kingdom of] Naples, which is named Gargon and is by 
the city named Syponte. And in the year of our Lord 



286 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

three [four] hundred and ninety, was, in the same city of 
Syponte a man which was named Garganus, which after 
some books had taken that name of the mountain or else the 
mountain took the name of the man. And he was right 
rich, and had a great multitude of sheep and beasts, and as 
they pastured about the sides of the mountain it happened 
that a bull left the other beasts and went up high in the 
mountain, and returned not home again with the other 
beasts. Then this rich man the owner took a great 
multitude of servants, and did do seek this bull all about ; 
and at the last he was founden on high in the mountain by 
the entry of a hole or cave. And then the master was 
wrath because he had strayed alone from the other beasts, 
and made one of his servants to shoot an arrow at him. 
And soon the arrow returned with the wind and smote him 
that had shot it, wherewith they of the city were troubled 
with this thing, and went to the bishop and inquired of him 
what was to be done in this thing that was so wonderful. 
And then he commanded them to fast three days and to 
pray unto God. And when this was done S. Michael appeared 
to the bishop saying : Know ye that this man is so hurt 
by my will. I am Michael the Archangel, which will that 
this place be worshipped on earth and will have it surely 
kept. And therefore I have proved that I am keeper of this 
place by the demonstrance and showing of this thing. 
And then anon the bishop and they of the city went with 
procession unto that place, and durst not enter into it, 
but made their prayers without forth." 

That bishop was S. Lorenzo of Sipontum, and he it was 
who first built here a church before the cavern and conse- 
crated it upon 29th September, the feast day of the Arch- 
angel in the 493. It is certain that this was the first 
apparition of the Archangel in the West. S. Michael had, 
however, long had a great importance in Constantinople, and 
it is curious to note that the bishop S. Lorenzo of Sipontum, 
the founder of the sanctuary of Monte Gargano, was a 
cousin of the Byzantine Emperor Zeno. 



MONTE S. ANGELO 287 

Beside the sanctuary of the Archangel, Monte S. Angelo 
has not much to show ; but the church of S. Maria Maggiore 
is a beautiful building of the twelfth century, and the church 
and especially the baptistery of S. Pietro, buildings of the 
same time, are interesting Norman works. The church 
has remains of some remarkable Giottesque frescoes which 
are worth seeing. The old Castello, the ruins of which re- 
main, is a building of the fifteenth century. 



XXIII 

BENEVENTO 

FROM Foggia a few days later we set out at last upon 
our homeward way towards Naples. Crossing the 
Tavoliere, we said farewell to the great rolling desert of 
Apulia, its winds, its drought, its curious mirage, which had 
come to have for us so strange a nobility in spite of its 
desolation, and indeed suggests often very strongly the 
ascetic beauty of Castile. So we passed up the wide bed of 
the Cervara under Troia into the wild valley of Bovino, 
and the hills, at the threshold of which, 2000 feet above 
the sea, stands the town of Bovino. 

Bovino, the Vibinium of Pliny, is a very ancient place, 
an episcopal towTi with a beautiful but small cathedral 
founded in 905 ; the present building, however, dates from 
the end of the thirteenth century. It has a charming 
fagade with a fine rose window and good portals, especially 
notable being the side doorway, over which in the lunette is 
a beautiful relief of a bishop between two attendant saints. 
Certain ruins of the Castello remain, and altogether the 
place is picturesque and charming, and famous if at all 
in modern times as the headquarters of the brigands who 
haunted these hills and forests, the most famous of whom 
were the three brothers Verdarelli. 

From Bovino the line climbs the valley as far as the 
station of Ariano di Puglia, some 1500 feet above the 
sea, beyond which it crosses the watershed and begins 
to descend towards the Tyrrhene Sea. Ariano itself is set 
upon the hills more than a thousand feet above the railway. 



BENEVENTO 289 

The place is scarcely worth a visit, but is interesting as 
commanding the watershed between the two seas, and 
though it cannot claim to be the Equus Tuticus of the 
Antonine Itinerary for the Roman road, between Bene- 
ventum and Troia almost certainly passed to the north, by 
the present village of Buonalbergo, it is of great antiquity, 
and probably saw the Romans come and go. 

The capital city of all this road between Foggia and 
Naples is of course Benevento, which in age and importance 
yields to no city in the South. It absolutely commanded 
the difficult road from Campania into Apulia, and in the 
time of the Romans, in the Middle Age, and even in modem 
days it has played a great part in the history of the penin- 
sula. Nor does its appearance fail to do it justice. No city 
in this part of Italy is more nobly situated, or, from afar, 
looks more lordly or more ancient. It stands up high over 
the road and the rivers which meet about it, the Calore 
and the Saboto, steeply enthroned and looking loftier than 
it is. Nothing, indeed, can well be finer than the approach 
to it from the railway over the Calore, whence the road 
climbs suddenly into the town and the Piazza in which 
stands the beautiful Cathedral. Unfortunately that 
approach is not made through the great Porta Aurea on the 
north, Trajan's Triumphal Arch, the most considerable 
Roman antiquity left in the city and perhaps in the South ; 
but all the same no one has ever come into Benevento 
without remembering Rome and the tragic and famous 
events which the mirage of the Empire was responsible 
for in this place in the Middle Age. 

Nothing in Italy is older than Benevento, which according 
to the local legends was founded either by Diomede or 
by Auson, a son of Ulysses and Circe. It was undoubtedly 
an ancient Ausonian city, established long before the 
Samnite conquest of this part of Italy. It is, however, as a 
Samnite city that we first hear of it, and it is then so strong 
a fortress that both in the first and in the second Samnite 
wars Rome does not dare to touch it. In the third Samnite 
19 



290 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

war, however, it came into Her hands, and in 276 saw 
the great defeat of Pyrrhus by the Consul Manius Curius. 
The King had taken the field in the spring, and had forced 
the Consul to flight here before he could join his colleague 
who was marching to join him out of Lucania. But the 
division of the Pyrrhic army which should have taken the 
Romans in the flank lost its way on a night march in the 
forest-clad hills, and failed to arrive in time. Pyrrhus 
therefore, expecting this attack to begin every moment, 
joined battle, and was defeated not by the Romans but by 
his own elephants, which, terrified by the Roman arrows, 
turned upon him. 

The Romans occupied the Pyrrhic Camp, took 1300 
prisoners, four elephants, and an immense spoil. This was 
the end of Pyrrhus. Beneventum, as it happened, was to 
see more than one encounter, which ended, as it were, at a 
stroke, the hope of a whole cause. 

After this Beneventum was occupied by a Roman colony, 
and it was at this time that the Romans gave it the name 
it has borne ever since. For till now it had been known 
as Maleventum, a name certainly of evil augury, but this 
the Romans changed after their victory to Beneventum, 
because of their good fortune. 

The cause of Pyrrhus was finally disposed of at Bene- 
ventum. One cannot say the same of the attempt of the 
Carthaginians, though the two defeats of Hanno, in 214 
and 212 B.C. there, had more than a little to do with 
the final discomfiture of the Orientals. From this time 
Beneventum flourished exceedingly, and, before the end 
of the Republic, appears as one of the richest cities in 
all Italy, while its success and happiness under the Empire 
are everywhere attested by its existing remains. It 
was probably at that time as considerable and populous a 
place as Capua, that is to say one of the chief cities in 
Southern Italy. This was doubtless due largely to its 
position upon the Via Appia, where it divided to run east 
and west to Troia and to Venusia and to Tarentum. Thus 



BENEVENTO 291 

Horace comes to it from Capua and Cocceius' Villa at 
Caudium. " Hence we go straight on to Ben even tum, 
where our bustling landlord nearly burnt his house down 
whilst roasting lean thrushes. . . . From that point 
Apulia begins to show to my eyes its familiar mountains 
scorched by the Altino. . . ." And for the same reason, 
namely, its position upon the road, it was constantly visited 
by the Emperors, especially by Nero, Trajan, and Septi- 
mius Severus. There the Senate and the Roman people 
erected the great Triumphal Arch, which still ennobles 
the city, in expectation of Trajan's return from the East 
in A.D. 116, as though here to welcome him back into Italy. 
Beneventum preserved its importance throughout the 
time of the Empire, and although during the Gothic wars it 
was taken by Totila, who flung down its walls, they were 
soon rebuilt, and another barbarian people raised her again 
to play an extraordinary and dominating part in the 
South. For more than five hundred years Benevento was 
the capital of the Lombard Kingdom in Southern Italy. 
Indeed, apart from the maritime cities which remained 
under the suzerainty of the Byzantine Empire, Lombard 
Benevento ruled all the South, all that part of Italy which 
became later the Kingdom of Naples. The Ducato di 
Benevento began as a part of the Lombard Kingdom, whose 
capital was Pavia, but it soon became independent, and 
long outlasted that amazing political achievement. And it 
may be said that the fact of its success prevented South 
Italy from becoming merely a Greek province or later a 
Saracen possession. So Benevento stood from the sixth to 
the eleventh century, when the Emperor Henry iii ceded 
the principaUty to Pope Leo ix. As a papal possession it 
was attacked in 1241 by Frederick 11, who partly destroyed 
it, and, as more than once before, in 1266 a battle was 
fought beneath its walls which practically decided the fate 
of a great cause. The battle of Benevento, which disposed 
of Manfred, was almost as conclusive as that in which 
Pyrrhus was defeated. 



292 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

This great encounter took place on February 26, 1266, 
near the Ponte della Maurella, the remains of which are 
still to be seen upon the right bank of the Galore above 
the town. Here Manfred met Charles of Anjou, and 
partly by reason of the treachery of the Barons of Apulia 
and the Counts of Caserta and Acerra lost his throne and 
his life. It is to Villani we owe one of the most vivid 
accounts of the battle — 

" King Manfred, having heard the news of the loss of 
San Germano, and his discomfited troops having returned 
thence, he was much dismayed, and took counsel what 
to do, and he was counselled by the Count Calvagno, 
and by the Count Giordano, and by the Count Bartolommeo, 
and by the Count Chamberlain, and by his other barons, 
to withdraw with all his forces to the city of Benevento, 
as a stronghold, in order that he might give battle on his 
own ground, and to the end he might withdraw towards 
Apuha, if need were, and also to oppose the passage of 
King Charles, forasmuch as by no other way could he 
enter into the Principality and into Naples, or pass into 
Apulia, save by the way of Benevento ; and thus it was 
done. King Charles, hearing of the going of Manfred 
to Benevento, immediately departed from San Germano, 
to pursue him with his host ; and he did not take the 
direct way of Capua, and by Terra di Lavoro, inasmuch 
as they could not have passed the bridge of Capua by 
reason of the strength of the towers of the bridge over 
the river, and the width of the river. But he determined 
to cross the river Volturno near Tuliverno, where it may 
be forded, whence he held on by the country of Alifi, 
and by the rough mountain paths of Beniventana, and 
without halting, and, in great straits for money and 
victual, he arrived at the hour of noon at the foot of 
Benevento in the valley over against the city, distant 
by the space of two miles from the bank of the river 
Calore, which flows at the foot of Benevento. King 
Manfred, seeing the host of King Charles appear, having 



^ 




ARCH OF TRAJAN 

BENEV'ENTO 



BENEVENTO 293 

taken counsel, determined to fight and to sally forth to 
the field with his mounted troops, to attack the army 
of King Charles before they should be rested ; but in this 
he did ill, for had he tarried one or two days. King Charles 
and his host would have perished or been captive without 
a stroke of sword, through lack of provisions for them 
and for their horses ; for the day before they arrived 
at the foot of Benevento, through want of victual, many 
of the troops had to feed on cabbages, and their horses 
on the stalks, without any other bread, or grain for the 
horses ; and they had no more money to spend. Also 
the people and forces of King Manfred were much dis- 
persed, for M. Conrad of Antioch was in Abruzzi with 
a following. Count Frederick was in Calabria, the Count 
of Ventimiglia was in Sicily; so that, if he had tarried a 
while, his forces would have increased ; but to whom 
God intends ill. He deprives of wisdom. Manfred, 
having sallied forth from Benevento with his followers, 
passed over the bridge which crosses the said river of 
Calore into the plain which is called the Pietra a Roseto ; 
here he formed three lines of battle or troops ; the first 
was of Germans, in whom he had much confidence, who 
numbered fully 1200 horse, of whom Count Calvagno 
was the captain : the second was of Tuscans and 
Lombards, and also of Germans, to the number of 1000 
horse, which was led by Count Giordano ; the third, 
which Manfred led, was of Apulians with the Saracens 
of Nocera, which was of 1400 horse, without the foot 
soldiers and the Saracen bowmen, which were in great 
numbers. 

"King Charles, seeing Manfred and his troops in the 
open field, and ranged for combat, took counsel whether 
he should offer battle on that day or should delay it. 
The most of his barons counselled him to abide till the 
coming morning, to repose the horses from the fatigue 
of the hard travel, and M. Giles le Brun, constable of 
France, said the contrary, and that by reason of delay 



294 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

the enemy would pluck up heart and courage, and that 
the means of living might fail them utterly, and that if 
others of the host did not desire to give battle, he alone, 
with his lord Robert of Flanders and with his followers, 
would adventure the chances of the combat, having con- 
fidence in God that they should win the victory against the 
enemies of Holy Church. Seeing this, King Charles gave 
heed to, and accepted his counsel, and through the great 
desire which he had for the combat, he said with a loud 
voice to his knights, ' Venu est le jour que nous avons 
tant desire,' and he caused the trumpets to be sounded, 
and commanded that every man should arm and prepare 
himself to go forth to battle ; and thus in a little time 
it was done. And he ordered, after the fashion of his 
enemies, over against them, three principal bands : the 
first band was of Frenchmen to the number of looo 
horse, whereof were captains Philip of Montfort and the 
marshal of Mirapoix ; of the second, King Charles with 
Count Guy of Montfort, and with many of his barons 
and of the queen's knights, and with barons and knights 
of Provence, and Romans, and of the Campania, which 
were about 900 horse ; and the royal banners were borne 
by William, the standard-bearer, a man of great valour ; 
the third was led by Robert, Count of Flanders, with his 
Prefect of the camp, Marshal Giles of France, with 
Flemings, and men of Brabant, and of Aisne and Picards, 
to the number of 700 horse. And besides these troops 
were the Guelf refugees from Florence, with all the 
Italians, and they were more than 400 horse, whereof 
many of the greater houses in Florence received knight- 
hood from the hand of King Charles upon the commence- 
ment of the battle ; and of these Guelfs of Florence and 
of Tuscany Guido Guerra was captain, and their banner 
was borne in that battle of Conrad of Montemagno of 
Pistoi. And King Manfred, seeing the bands formed, 
asked what folk were in the fourth band, which made a 
goodly show in arms and in horses and in ornaments : 



BENEVENTO 295 

answer was made him that they were the Guelf refugees 
from Florence and from the other cities of Tuscany. 
Then did Manfred grieve, saying, * Where is the help 
that I receive from the Ghibelline party whom I have 
served so well, and on whom I have expended so much 
treasure ? * And he said, ' Those people (that is, the 
band of Guelf) cannot lose to-day ' ; and that was as 
much as to say that if he gained the victory he would 
be the friend of the Florentine Guelfs, seeing them to be 
so faithful to their leader and to their party, and the foe 
of the Ghibellines. 

" The troops of the two kings being set in order on the 
plain of Grandella, after the aforesaid fashion, and each 
one of the said leaders having admonished his people to 
do well, and King Charles having given to his followers 
the cry, * Ho Knights, Monjoie ! ' and King Manfred to 
his, * Ho Knights, for Suabia ! ' the bishop of Alzurro 
as papal legate absolved and blessed all the host of King 
Charles, remitting sin and penalty, forasmuch as they 
were fighting in the service of Holy Church. And this 
done, there began the fierce battle between the two first 
troops of the German and of the French, and the assault 
of the Germans was so strong that they evilly entreated 
the French troop, and forced them to give much ground, 
and they themselves took ground. The good King 
Charles, seeing his followers so ill-bestead, did not keep 
to the order of the battle to defend himself with the second 
troop, considering that if the first troop of the French, in 
which he had full confidence, were routed, little hope of 
safety was there from the others ; but immediately with 
his troop he went to succour the French troop, against that 
of the Germans, and when the Florentine refugees and 
their troop beheld King Charles strike into the battle, 
they followed boldly, and performed marvellous feats of 
arms that day, always following the person of King Charles ; 
and the same did the good Giles le Brun, constable of 
France, with Robert of Flanders and his troop ; and of 



296 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

the other side Count Giordano fought with his troop, 
wherefore the battle was fierce and hard, and endured for 
a long space, no one knowing who was getting the advan- 
tage, because the Germans by their valour and strength, 
smiting with their swords, did much hurt to the French. 
But suddenly there arose a great cry among the French 
troops, whosoever it was who began it, saying, ' To 
your daggers ! To your daggers ! Strike at the horses ! ' 
And this was done, by the which thing in a short time the 
Germans were evilly entreated and much beaten down, 
and well-nigh turned to flight. King Manfred, who with 
his troops of Apulians remained ready to succour the host, 
beholding his followers not able to abide the conflict, 
exhorted the people of his troop that they should follow 
him into the battle, but they gave little heed to his word, 
for the greater part of the barons of Apulia and of the 
Kingdom, among others the Count Chamberlain, and 
him of Acerra and him of Caserta, and others, either 
through cowardice of heart, or seeing that they were 
coming by the worse, and there are those who say through 
treachery, as faithless folk, and desirous of a new lord, 
failed Manfred, abandoning him and fleeing, some towards 
Abruzzi and some towards the city of Benevento. Man- 
fred, being left with few followers, did as a valiant lord, 
who would rather die in battle as king than flee with 
shame ; and whilst he was putting on his helmet, a silver 
eagle which he wore as crest fell down before him on his 
saddle-bow ; and he seeing this, was much dismayed, 
and said to the barons, which were beside him, in Latin, 
* Hoc est signum Dei, for I fastened this crest with my 
own hand after such a fashion that it should not have been 
possible for it to fall ' ; yet for all this he did not give 
up, but as a valiant lord he took heart, and immediately 
entered into the battle, without the royal insignia, so as 
not to be recognized as king, but like any other noble, 
striking bravely into the thickest of the fight ; neverthe- 
less, his followers endured but a little while, for they were 



BENEVENTO 297 

already turning ; and straightway they were routed and 
King Manfred slain in the midst of his enemies, it was said 
by a French esquire, but it was not known for certain. 
In that battle there was great mortality both on the one 
side and on the other, but much more among the followers 
of Manfred ; and whilst they were pursued by the army 
of King Charles, which followed them as far as the city 
(for night was already faUing) and took the city of Bene- 
vento and those who were fleeing. Many chief barons 
of King Manfred were taken ; among others were taken 
Count Giordano, and Messer Piero Asino degli Uberti ; 
which two King Charles sent captive to Provence, and 
there he caused them to die a cruel death in prison. The 
other Apulian and German barons he kept in prison in 
divers places in the Kingdom ; and a few days after, the 
wife of the said Manfred, and his children and his sister, 
who were in Nocera of the Saracens in Apulia, were de- 
livered as prisoners to King Charles, and they afterwards 
died in his prison. And without doubt there came upon 
Manfred and his heirs the malediction of God, and right 
clearly shown the judgment of God upon him because he 
was excommunicated, and the enemy and persecutor of 
Holy Church. At his end, search was made of Manfred 
for more than three days, and he could not be found, and 
it was not known if he was slain, or taken, or escaped 
because he had not borne royal insignia in the battle; 
at last he was recognized by one of his own camp-followers 
by sundry marks on his person, in the midst of the battle- 
field ; and his body being found by the said camp-follower, 
he threw it across an ass he had and went his way crying, 
' Who buys Manfred ? Who buys Manfred ? ' And 
one of the king's barons chastised this fellow and brought 
the body of Manfred before the king, who caused all the 
barons which had been taken prisoners to come together, 
and having asked each one if it was Manfred, they all 
timidly said Yes. When Count Giordano came, he 
smote his hands against his face, weeping and crying 



298 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 

* Alas, alas, my lord,' wherefor he was commended by 
the French ; and some of the barons prayed the king 
that he would give Manfred the honour of sepulture ; but 
the king made answer, ' Je le fairois volontiers, s'il ne 
fut excommunie ' ; but forasmuch as he was excom- 
municated, King Charles would not have him laid in a 
holy place ; but at the foot of the bridge of Benevento he 
was buried, and upon his grave each one of the host threw 
a stone ; whence there arose a great heap of stones. But 
by some it was said that afterwards, by command of the 
Pope, the bishop of Cosanza had him taken from that 
sepulchre, and sent him forth from the Kingdom which 
was Church land, and he was buried beside the Rio Verde, 
on the borders of the Kingdom and Campania ; this, how- 
ever, we do not affirm." 

Little or nothing remains in Benevento to-day to remind 
us of Manfred. The city in so far as it is ancient is Roman 
and Lombard, its Castle, a work of the fourteenth century, 
alone reminding us of the Aragons, who in some sort may 
be said to have avenged Manfred, and to have claimed 
the Kingdom as the heirs of his House. 

Rome remains in Benevento as in no other city of the 
South. It is not only that she stands there in all her 
glory in the Triumphal Arch of Trajan, but that her marks 
are everjrwhere, on the walls, the churches, and the very 
houses of the city. 

The Arch of Trajan, the Porta Aurea erected by the 
Senate and the Roman people in honour of the Emperor 
in A.D. T15, resembles the Arch of Titus in Rome, but is 
constructed of Greek marble, is 50 feet high with a passage 
of 27 feet. Of old it was adorned with a quadriga and the 
statue of the Emperor : these have gone. The fine series 
of reliefs, however, remain. 

It is to a different relic of another and a barbarous 
age that we come in the little Piazza at the top of the 
Corso. Here stands the little round dark church of S. 
Sofia, modernized and rebuilt, it is true, but still funda- 



BENEVENTO 299 

mentally a building of the Lombard time, dating from 
the eighth century, and borne by eight antique columns, 
two of marble and six of granite. Beside it stands a build- 
ing of the eleventh or twelfth century, the cloisters of a 
Benedictine monastery, doubtless founded by the monks 
of Monte Cassino, who had so much to do with Benevento 
at that time. Its curious capitals are worth notice, as is 
the lofty campanile in the Piazza. 

It is a work of the same period that we find in what, 
when all is said, is the loveliest building left to us to-day 
in Benevento, the very noble Cathedral which dates from 
the eleventh century, but is as we see it largely of the 
thirteenth, when the campanile was built. Here on the 
wall we see the ancient relief of a boar, reminding us that 
in the time of Procopius the people of Benevento claimed 
to possess the tusks of the Calydonian boar. 

Without, the Cathedral remains largely of the earlier 
time, the lower part of the facade being especially fine, 
particularly the main doorway here, ennobled with the 
richest and loveliest carving, and the great doors of bronze 
with their seventy-two compartments all filled with ex- 
quisite reliefs of scenes from the life of Christ and figures 
of Saints. These date from the end of the twelfth century. 

Within, the church which is a basilica of five naves borne 
by pillars is modernized, but it still contains more than one 
treasure, such as the two beautiful ambones with their 
splendid carving and statues and less fine mosaics of the 
early fourteenth century, the fine paschal candlestick of 
about the same time, and the splendid bronze chest in 
the Sacristy adorned with reliefs and precious with enamels 
of the twelfth century. 

Little beside remains in the city worth seeing, a few 
Roman things, the debris of a hedge, the foundations, 
perhaps, of baths or a palace. Our journey was over, and 
with heavy hearts we made our way back to Naples, 
rejoicing only in this, that we had seen the South. 



INDEX 



Abruzzi, 25^1, 280, 293 

Acarnania, 103 

Acerenza, 273 

Acerra, Count of, 292, 296 

Achseans, the, 171, 172, 191, 

206, 209, 216 
Achilles, 50 

Acroceraunian Mountains, 229 
Actiuni, 47 
Adrian iv, Pope, 12 
JEcx, 269, 270 
^neas, 142, 146 
yEolis, 6 
^sarus, 202 
^schines, 48 
Agathocles, 167, 177 
Ageadas of Argos, 216, 235 
Agincourt, Pierre d', 30, 276 
Agis, the, 208 
Agnano, Lago d', 66 
Agrippa, 200 

Postumus, 104 
Agrippina, Empress, 76, 104 
Agropoli, 128, 133, 142-5, 155, 
Alalia, 143 
Alaric, 9, 155-9, 1S3 
Albania, 229, 274 
Alberada, 256, 262, 265 
Alcimenes, 206 
Alento, the, 140, 143 
Alexander iv, Pope, 14 
Alexander vi, Pope, 154 
Alexander the Great, 48 
Alexander, King of Epirus, 

136, 156, 177, 209, 217 
Alexander Severus, 75 
Alexandria, 69 
Alfonso I of Aragon, 20, 21, 

29, 30, 31, 34, 43, 97 



197, 



164 



132, 



27, 



Alfonso II of Aragon, 21, 22, 44 

Algiers, 140 

Alifi, 292 

Altamura, 254-6 

Alzurro, 295 

Amalfi, 12, 23, 98, loi, 107-18, 

123, 141, 265, 285 
Amboise, 154 
Amendolara, 207 
Amendolea, the, 184 
Ameto, 166 
Anacapri, 102, 105 
Anacletus ii, Antipope, 12 
Anagni, i 
Anaxilas, 175, 181 
Andrea da Salerno, 52, 126, 129 
Andrew of Hungary, 17, 18, 34, 

38, 41 
Andria, 244, 246, 249-52, 269 
Angri, 142 
Anjou, House of, 13, 16, 22, 31, 

34-42, 97 
Antenor, 47 
Anthony, 77, 234 
Antinous, 25 
Antioch, 265, 293 
Antonello da Messina, 55 
Apollonia Dyrrhachium, 229 
Appian, 156, 168 

Way, the, 69, 157, 233, 235, 

237, 290 
Apulia, II, 122, 137, 222,234, 237, 

244, 248, 265 
Aquinas, S. Thomas, 43 
Arabs, the, 259 
Aragon, House of, 16, 20, 28, 30, 

.31,43-5 
Arbicello, the, 160 
Archidemus, King, 176, 216, 224 



300 



INDEX 



301 



Arcos, Duke of, 23 
Ardoin, 259 
Arenula, ii 
Ariano, Count of, 270 

di Puglia, 288 
Aristodenus, 73 
Aristogeitus, 46 
Aries, 225 

Armenia, King of, 70 
Armstrong, Stabilamento, 71 
Arpi, 268 
Artemis, 47 
Ascea, 143 
Aspromonte, 137, 138, 162, 16.3, 

169, 184, 189 
Assisi, 153, 281 
Athenaeus, 207, 216 
Athens, 175, 187, 234 
Atrani, 118 
Atticus, Herodus, 264 
Augustariccio, Archbishop, 114 
Augustus Caesar, 26, 47, 58, 63, 70, 
72, 77, 92, 100, 103, 182, 234 
Auson, 289 
Austria, Duke of, 15 

House of, 23 
Avellino, 36 

Avernus, Lake of, 63, 72, 74 
Aversa, 11, 38, 122, 258, 259 
Avignon, 17, 18 

Baboccio da Piperno, 40, 125 

Babylon, 193 

Bacchanalia, the, 163 

Bacoli, 76 

Bagnoli, 64 

Baia, 2, 8, 57, 65, 69, 70, 74, 145 

Barbari, Jacopo, 55 

Barbetta, Giovanni Pipino di, 39 

Barcelona, 30 

Bari, 10, 12, 121, 122, 235-44, 

. 249. 254 
Barisano of Trani, 253 
Barletta, 244, 249, 251-3, 263, 

265, 267 
Bartoli, Taddeo, 54 
Bartolomeneo, Count, 15 
Bartolommeo da Foggia, 116, 269 
Basilicata, 137, 222, 258 
Battipaglia, 128, 129 
Beatrix, daughter of Manfred, 27 
Belisarius, 9, 10, 220, 270 



Bellini (composer), 30 

Giovanni; 55 
Belvedere, 150, 151 
Benedetto da Maiano, 44 
Benevento, 10, ii, 15, 27, 36, in, 

121, 122, 140, 263, 274, 279, 

284, 288-99 
Bessarion, Cardinal, 114 
Bigot, Guillaume, 271 
Bisceglie, 253 
Bitonto, 244-6, 249 
Bitteto, 254 
Bivona, 168 

Boccaccio, 19, 38, 40, 61, 75 
Bohemund of Taranto, 226, 256, 

264 
Bojoannis, Basil, 11, 270 
Bologna, 52, 55, 124 
Bona, Queen of Poland, 239 
Bonaparte, Joseph, 24 
Boniface viii. Pope, 274 
Bosco Trecase, 81 
Botteghelle, 108 
Botticelli, 53 

Bourbon, House of, 40, 45, 58, 97 
Bovino, 288 
Bradano, the, 222 
Brancaccio, Cardinal, 19, 42 
Brancaleone, 184 
Brescia, 56 

Bresciano, Andrea del, 54 
Brienne, Counts of, 227 
Brindisi, 9, 12, 58, 218, 222, 225, 

229, 231-6, 263, 267 
Briseis, 50 
Brun, Giles le, 293 
Bruttii, the, 167, 176, 177, 184, 

186, 195, 202 
Brutus, 28, 64 
Buonalbergo, 289 
Burgundy, Duke of, 119 
Busento, the, 156-8 
Butromile, Landolfo, 125 
Buxentum, 145 
Byzantine influence in South Italy, 

188, 203, 226, 227, 230, 234, 

238, 243, 264 

Caius Csesar, 69, 70 

Marius, 75, 77 
Calabria, 24, 122, 137, 151, 158, 
160, 161, 203, 222, 265 



302 



NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 



Caligula, 9, 48, 69, 75 

Calvagno, Count, 15, 292 

Calydon, 47 

Camaino, Tino di, 37, 40 

Camaldoli, 65 

Cambyses, 193 

Campagna, the, i 

Campania, 2, 7, 65, 79, 82, 86, 91, 

96 
Cannse, 11, 218, 233, 258, 263-6, 

270 
Canosa, 262-6 
Canossa, 14, 126 
Capaccio, 130, 133 
Capo Bruzzano, 185 

Coroglio, 64 
Capodimonte, 2, 10, 26, 35, 46 
Capo Miseno, 2, 6, 8, 57, 62, 64, 

67, 
Caporali, 54 

Capo Spartivento, 184, 187 
Cappuccini, the, no, 115 
Capri, 2, 62, ()Ti 87, 101-7, 141, 

171 
Capua, 7, 9, 10, 11, 157, 258, 259, 
290, 291, 292 

Count of, 121, 122 
Capuano, Cardinal, 114, 115 
Caracciolo, 20 

Archbishop, 34 

Ferrante, 252 

Giovanni, 42 
Carafa, Anna, 62 

Cardinal Oliviero, 34-6 
Cariati, 203 

Carovigno, 216, 235, 236 
Carpanizano, 161 
Carthage, 195, 218, 219 
Carthaginians, the, 143, 167, 178, 

182, 185, 265, 270, 290 
Casa Bianca, 81 
Casalnuovo, 223, 224 
Caserta, 18, 70 

Count of, 292, 296 
Cassiodorus, 9, 189 
Cassius, 64 
Castel Capuano, 6, 12, 27 

del Carmine, 23, 27, 32 

del Monte, 246-9, 276 

dell' Ovo, 3, 22, 27, 28, 61 

di Murano, 19 

di Muro, 41 



Castel Nuovo, 16, 18, 21, 27, 30, 

33. 41, 43» 44 
Sant' Elmo, 2, 3, 5, 17, 27, 30 
Castellamare, 2, 57, 96-8, 108 

della Bruce, 143 
Castello di S. Cataldo, 225 
Castracani, Castruccio, 17 
Catacombs, the, 26, 35 
Catanzaro, 139, 1 60-5, 188-90 
Catherine of Austria, 38 
Cato, 196 
Caudium, 291 

Caulonia, 175, 185, 188, 192 
Cavallini, Pietro, 37 
Cerignola, 264, 267 
Cetara, ill, 118 
Chalcidians, the, 172, 180, 182 
Charlemagne, Emperor, 109, 238 
Charles i of Anjou, 15-7, 27, 29- 

32, 34, 36, 40, 238, 248, 274, 

279, 284, 292-8 
Charles 11 of Anjou, 16, 31, 34, 

37, 39, 40, 43, 97, 99, ii3, 
117, 248, 257, 274 

Charles iii. King, 23, 28, 38, 40, 

41, 45, 58 
Charles iv. King, 45 
Charles v. Emperor, 22, 29, 33, 

100, 213, 227, 235, 251 
Charles Vili, King, 22, 28, 154 
Charles of Bourbon, 23, 29, 30 
Charles, Duke of Calabria, 5, 17, 

38, 39 

Charles of Durazzo, 18, 19, 38, 125 

Charles Martel, 34 

Chateaubriand, 5 

Chiana, 3 

Choerades, the, 213 

Cicero, 28, 64, 68, 71, 76, 91-3, 

179, 183, 198, 209, 233 
Cilento, 140, 141, 143 
Giro, 203 

Cistercians, the, 115 
Cities of UmbriUy 159 
Citta di S. Maria, 275 
Civita, 260 
Cleisthenes, 206 
Clement vii, Pope, 18, 55 
Clementina, Queen, 34 
Cleonymus, 177, 217 
Clovio, Giulio, 53 
Cluny, 119, 140, 227, 257, 260 



INDEX 



303 



Cocceius, Marcus, 63, 291 
Cola, Gennaro di, 41 
Colaci, Francesco, 230 
CoUingwood, Lord, 105 
Cologne, 254 
Colonia Neptunia, 219 
Colophon, 144, 171 
Como, 35 
Conca, no 

Conrad, Emperor, 11, 14, 252 
Conradin, 14, 15, 25, 32, 274 
Constance, Empress, 13, 124 
Constans ii, Emperor, 272 
Constantine, Emperor, 35 
Constantinople, 9, 21, 89, 114, 

125, 126, 167, 229, 238, 252, 

285, 286 
Corace, 161, 163 

the, 189 
Corato, 246, 249, 252 
Corigliano, 205 
Cornelius, Lucius, 217 

Publius, 92 
Correggio, 56 
Corsairs, the, 148 
Corsica, 143, 180 
Cortona, 191 
Corvus, Valerius, 7 
Cosenza, 139, 151-61, 298 
Cosmati, 119 
Cotrone, 131, 148, 190-201. See 

Crotona 
Coutances, 258 

Crati, the, 155, 156, 159, 160, 204 
Cremisso, 203 
Crete, 214 
Criscuolo, 52 
Critics, 47 
Croton, 73, 191 
Crotona, 144, 167, 17 1-3, 176-9, 

185, 186, 190-202, 206-10,212 
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 41 
Crucoli, 203 
Crusades, the, 112, 122, 235, 252, 

265 
Cumae, 6, 63, 65, 73, 74, 100, 131, 

170, 171, 180 
Curius, Manlius, 290 

Dante, 54, 60, 73 
Darius, King, 69, 193 
Decius, P., 7 



Del Balzo family, the, 238, 257 
Delphi, 180, 191, 208, 214, 216, 

235 
Democritus, 144 
Demosthenes, 48, 183 
Dickens, Charles, 281 
Diomede, 279, 289 
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 142 
of Syracuse, 167, 175, 176, 181 
185, 188, 195, 206, 207, 216 
Domenichino, 35 
Donatello, 42, 43 
Donizetti, 30 
Donnici, 160 
Doria, Ruggiero, 27 
Dorians, the, 131, 135, 171, 172 
Doris, 185 
Dossi, Dosso, 56 
Drogon, 257-62 
Drusus, 104 

Eboli, 128-30, 141 

Egyptians, the, 193 

El Greco, 53 

Elis, 180 

Epicurus, 144 

Epirus, King of, 132, 136, 156, 

177, 217, 279 
Epomeo, 141 
Etna, 168, 183 
Euboea, 6, 73 
Eurymedon, 183 
Evelyn, John, 66 

Fabius Cunctator, 178, 219, 220, 

269 
Falconera, 16 
Falconi, the, 253 
Farnese, Cardinal, 54, 55 

Ottaviano, 55 

Pietro Luigi, 30 

Hercules, the, 47 
Fasano, 236 

Federigo of Aragon, 16, 22 
Fei, Paolo di Giovanni, 36 
Ferdinand i of Aragon, 20, 27, 

32, 43, 213, 219, 252 
Ferdinand ii of Aragon, 22, 43 
Ferdinand iv of Aragon, 23, 45, 

46, 90 
Ferrara, 17, loi 

School ofj 56 



304 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 



Fiammetta, 38, 6 1, 75 

Fiore, Colantonio del, 53 

Firenze, Giovanni da, 39 

Fiumenica, the, 203 

Flaccus, Flavius, 200 

Florence, 17, 19, 21, 44, 224, 227, 

274 
Florentia, Andrea di, 42 
Florentine School, the, 53 
Foggia, 250, 267-74, 280, 288 
Fontana, 29, 46 
Fortore, the, II 
Fosanova, 115 
Fra Angelico, 120 

Bartolommeo, 54 
Francavilla, 222 
Francesco da Banco, 250 
Francis of Bourbon, 24, 44 
Frangianni, 252 
Frangipani, 15 
Frederick Barbarossa, 12, 14, 142, 

183, 238, 247 
Frederick ii of Aragon, 12, 13, 

27, 28, 29, 32, 36, 62 
Frederick II, Emperor, 97, 98, 

115, 123, 158, 166, 167, 223, 

235. 238, 239, 249, 250-5, 

262, 268, 272-7, 291 
French rule in Naples, 23, 24 
Fuorigrotta, 6$, 66 
Furore, iio 
Fusaro, Lago del, 74 

Gaddi, Taddeo, 53 

Gaeta, 24, 52, 65, 98 

Galatina, 230, 231 

Galesus, the, 218, 221 

Galla Placidia, 157 

Gallipoli, 225, 226, 231 

Garbo, Raffaelino del, 54 

Gargano, 10, 248, 251, 252, 267, 

279,285 
Garibaldi, 24, 45, 46, 184 
Garigliano, the, 142 
Garofalo, 56 
Gazola, Conte, 133 
Genoa, 2, 17, 98, II2 
Genseric, 9 
Gerace, 171, 184, 187 
Germanicus, 104 
Geryon, 191 
Gherardo, Count, 15 



Ghibellines, the, 17, no, 276, 279, 

295 
Gianpietro, 56 
Gibbon, Edward, 157 
Gilbert, 127 
Gioja, 169 
del Colle, 254 
Flavio, 113 
Giordano, Count, 292, 296-8 

Luca, 53 
Giotto, 17, 28, 39, 40, 41, 52, 117 
Giovanna i, Queen, 17-20,28, 34, 

40-2, 114 
Giovanna 11, Queen, 19, 42, 97, 

125 
Giovanni di Durazzo, 43 

Matteo di, 54 
Girofalco, 273 
Girolamo da S. Croce, 62 
Gisulfus of Salerno, 112 
Gnatia, 236 
Godfrey of Lecce, 226 
Goethe, 79 
Gonsalvo da Cordova, 22, 31, 44, 

98, 252 
Gonzaga, Francesco, 56 
Goths, the, 9, 155-7, 226, 234, 

238, 291 
Goya, 45 
Gragnano, ill 
Grandella, 295 
Gravina, 255, 256 
Greeks, the, 8, 123, 132, 164, 

170-9, 188 
Gregorovius, 224 
Gregory vil, Pope, III, 126, 260 
Gregory ix. Pope, 14, 247 
Grisons, the, 13 
Grotta di Sejano, 63 
Guaimar of Salerno, 258, 260 
Gualferano, Count, 15 
Guelfs, the, 17, 276, 294 
Guerra, Guido, 294 
Guiscard, Robert, 11, 12, II2, 115, 

123, 124, 133, 148, 157, 164, 

167, 183, 220, 226, 240, 256- 

62, 265, 270 
Gyges, King of Lydia, 171 

Hadrian, Emperor, 25, 75 
Hadrian IV, Pope, 117 
Halex, the, 143, 184 



INDEX 



305 



Hamill, Major, 105 

Hannibal, 8, 120, 156, 178, 186, 

I95> I99> 200, 202, 207-10, 

218, 219, 233, 263-6, 269, 

272 
Hanno, 290 
Harmodius, 46 
Harpagus, 143 
Hauteville, Tancred de, 258 
Helleporus, the, 195 
Helorus, the, 182, 188 
Henry, King, 127, 158, 166 
Henry ii, Emperor, 260, 270 
Henry in, Emperor, 291 
Henry vi, Emperor, 13 
Hera, Temple of, 190, 196-201 
Heraclea, 8, 172, 178, 191, 198, 

207, 208, 216 
Herculaneum, 46-51, 77, 82, 89, 

90. 92, 93» 97 
Hercules, 72, 92 

Herodotus, 148, 149, I75> 215, 235 
Hieron of Syracuse, 181 
Hildebrand, 126, 127, 258, 260, 

265 
Himilco, 156 
Hipparchus, 46 
Hippocrates, 123 
Hipponium, 167, 168, 170, 172, 

176, 185 
Hohenstaufen, the, 13-5, 25, 32, 

no, 237, 246, 249, 268, 272 
Homer, 48 
Honorius, Pope, 14 
Horace, 74, 100, 121, 221, 234, 

236, 237, 245, 256, 263, 290 
Hortensius, 76 
Huguenots, the, 154 
Humphrey, 258-60, 262 
Hungary, kingdom of, 19, 34 

lamblichus, 192 

lapygia, 175, 214-7, 222-5, 230 

Illyria, 233, 234 

Innocent ii, Pope, 12 

Innocent in, Pope, 13, 14 

Innocent iv, Pope, 14, 34, 112, 

247, 274 
Innocent xii. Pope, 34 
lolanthe of Jerusalem, 235, 250, 

269 
Ionia, 143, 171, 187 

20 



[ Isabella of Aragon, 239 

of England, 158, 250, 269 
Ischia, 2, 103, 107, 141 
Italicus, Silius, 263 

Jacques de Bourbon, 19 

Jean of Anjou, 21 

Jerusalem, 112, 252 

Jews, the, 164 

Joachim da Fiore, 159 

Johanna of Durazzo, 38 

John viii, Pope, 10 

John XV, Pope, in 

John XIX, Pope, 271 

Juan of Aragon, 20 

Julius III, Pope, 278 

Julius Csesar, 28, 64, 183, 234 

Justinian, Emperor, 112, 203 

Justus of Corinth, 225 

Juvenal, 103 

La Cava, 109, 118-20, 128, 140 

Lacinios, 191 

Ladislaus, King, 19, 40-2, 125 

La Gajola, 63 

Lamarque, General, 105 

Lametus, the, 165, 166 

Laurana, 31, 250 

Laus, 147-9, ISS» ^72, 174, 176, 

206 
Lautrec, 44 

Lecce, 13, 224-30, 244, 265 
Lemos, Conde de, 22, 29, 30, 46 
Lenormant, 164, 189, 200, 213, 

262, 265, 276 
Leo IX, Pope, 260, 291 
Leo X, Pope, 54 
Leonardo da Vinci, 56 
Leopardi, 65 
Leopold, Emperor, 23 
Le Petagne, 232 
Leucasia, 142 
Leucippos, 144 
Leucopetra, 183 
Libo, 64 
Li Galli, 102 
Li pari Islands, the, 169 
Lippi, Filippino, 53 
Livius, Marcus, 219 
Livy, 7, 86, 120, 156, 170, 187, 

208 
Locano, 187 



3o6 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 



Locri, 167, 171, 172, 17s, 178, 

181-8, 192, 195, 212 
Lombards, the, 121, 122, 226, 234, 

238, 259, 291 
Lone, no 
Loreto, 281, 285 
Lothair, 112 
Lotto, Lorenzo, 55 
Louis II, Emperor, 238 
Louis IV, King, 252 
Louis XI of France, 153 
Louis XII of France, 22 
Louis of Anjou, 18, 20, 158 

of Hungary, 18, 235 

of Taranto, 18, 19, 41 
Lourdes, 285 
Lowe, Sir Hudson, 105 
Lucania, 144, 148, 290 
Lucanians, the, 132, 136., 147, 176, 

177, I9S> 210, 216, 217 
Lucca, 17 
Lucera, 271-7 
Lucifero, Antonio, 198 
Lucrine Lake, the, 71, 72, 92 
Lucullus, 8, 9, 28, 75, 77 
Luini, Bernardo, 56 
Lupise, 225 
Lycurgus, 48, 214 
Lydia, 171 
Lysikrates, 187 
Lysippus, 50, 220 

Macedonia, 233 

Macistus, 180 

Maecenas, 234 

Magna Grsecia, 6, 46, T2>^ 131, 137, 

142, 143, 150, 155, 160, 165, 

170-9, 188, 191, 194, 203, 

2x6, 221, 231 
Maiana, Giuliano da, 31, 33 
Maida, 166 
Maine, 16 
Majolus, Simon, G'j 
Majorca, King of, 18 
Majori, 118 
Malta, 105 

Malvito, Tommaso, 35 
Manduria, 176, 216, 223 
Manfred, 14-6, 27, 124, 166, 238, 

247, 248, 274, 277-9, 291-8 
Manfredonia, 278-83 
Maniakis, Georgios, 258 



Manlius, T,, 7 
Mantegna, 56 
Mantua, 60, 61 
Marcellus, ^6 
Marches, the, 161 
Marco da Siena, 34 
Marechiano, 62 
Margaret of Anjou, 125 
Maria of Aragon, 44 

of Hungary, 37 
Marius, 8 
Marseilles, 143 
Martial, 74, lOO 
Martin iv, Pope, 16 
Martini, Simone, 17, 37, 41, 52 
Martino, Pietro di, 31 
Mary, Empress, 40 

of Valois, 40 
Masaccio, 53 
Masaniello, 23, 32, 117 
Masolino, 53 

Mauro, Pantaleone di, 114 
Mazzara, 273 
Medici, Lorenzo de', 21 
Medina, Duke of, 62 
Megara, 234 
Megaris, 28 

Melfi, II, 247, 258-62, 264, 270 
Melito, 183 

Melo of Pari, 258, 266, 270 
Melus, 10 
Memmi, Lippo, 54 
Menas, 77 

ISIendoza, Don Inigo de, 32 
Men tone, 98 
Mesima, the, 169 
Messapians, the, 222-4, 23S 
Messenian Wars, the, 214 
Messina, 154, 169, 171, 172, 180 
Meta, 99 
Metapontum, 171, 173-S, 197,208- 

12, 216, 219, 222 
Metauria, 169 
Michelangelo, 284 
Michelozzo, 42 
M icy thus, 181 
Milan, 20, 22, 30, 139 

School of, 56 
Mile of Crotona, 192, 194, 206 
Minervino, 262 
Minori, 118 
Mirapoix, 294 



INDEX 



307 



Misenum, 2, 26, 58, 62, 74, 76-9, 

82, 87 
Mithridates, 233 
Mitylene, 200 
Modugno, 254 
Mohammed, 109 
Molfetta, 253 
Monaco, Guillamne, 31 
Monasterace, 188 
Monopoli, 235, 236 
Monreale, 116 
Monte, Antonio del, 278 
Barbaro, 7 
Bulgheria, 147, 149 
Cassino, i, 114, 120, 140, 258, 

259, 299 
Cerasco, 149 
Elia, 169 
Gargano, 122 
Giove, 128 
Monteleone, 167, 168 
Montemagno, Conrad cf, 294 
Montemar, 23 
Monte Nnovo, 71, 90 
Oliveto, 42, 44 
S. Angelo, 10, 98, loi, 112, 140, 

141, 280, 283-7 
de' Salvatechi, 74 
Somma, 90 
Stella, 140, 141 
Vergine, 36 
Vulture, 262 
Monti Lattari, 96 
Montolio, 260 
Montpelier, 124 
Moore, Sir John, 105 
Moretto, 56 
Murat, 24, 29, 62, 167 
Muscetola, Sergio, 116 
Myra, 240-3 
Myron, 50 
Myscellus, 191 

Nacchearino, 114 

Napier, 105 

Naples, 79, 138, 170, 258 

Angevin churches of, 33-43 

characteristics of, I-5 

classical, 24-6 

fortresses, palaces, gates, and 
harbour of, 27-33 

Museo Nazionale, 45-56 



Naples, story of, 5-24 

Napoleon I, 105 

Napoletano, Simone, 38, 40, 129 

Narses, 142, 220, 270 

Navarro, Pietro, 44 

Neaithos, the, 159, 202 

Nemours, Due de, 252 

Nero, 9, 25, 70, 72, 75, 76, 82, 92, 

225, 291 
Nesiotes, 47 
Nicastro, 163, 166 
Nice, 98 

Nicephorus Phocas, 164 
Nicholas II, Pope, 157, 258, 261 
Nicolao da Foggia, 269 
Nicolaus, sculptor, 245 
Nicotera, 168 
Nimes, 225 
Nisida, 64, 67 
Nocera, 293, 297 
Nola, 8, 9, 157 

Giovanni da, 33, 34, 43, 44, 45 
Norbanus, Caius, 263 
Normans, the, lo, ii, 122, 238, 

249, 258-62, 270 
Novito, 187 
Nuceria, 8, 92 

Octavius Csesar, 234 

Oderisio, Robertus di, 41,^ 129, 

272 
Odoacer, 8, 28, 78 
CEnotria, 203 
QEnotrians, the, 176 
Ofanto, the, 263, 264 
Oggiono, 56 
Ogliastro, 140 
Olivarez, Viceroy, 34 
Olympiad, the, 192 
Ordone di Flora, the, 159 
Oria, 222, 223, 226 

Ruggiero d', 98 
Origlia, Guerello, 19, 42 
Orontius, Publius, 225 
Orseolo, Doge Pietro, 238 
Orsini, the, 256 

Raimondello Balzo, 230, 231 
Ortanova, 267 
Ortolano, 56 
Ostia, 154 
Ostuni, 236 
Osuna, Duke of, 22, 46 



3o8 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 



Otranto, 12, 21, 205, 224-30, 234, 

244, 255, 265 
Ottajano, 81 

Otto of Brunswick, 18, 122 
Ovid, 97, 187 

Paduan School, the, 55 

Paesiello, 30 

Psestum, 6, 46, 98, 114, 125, 128- 

37, 139, 141, 198, 217 
Palsepolis, 6, 7 

Palermo, 2, 12, iii, 121, 276 
Palinuro, 145-7 
Palma Vecchio, 55, 236 
Palmi, 169 
Pandosia, 210 
Pantheism, 144 
Paola, 150-5 
Paolo, Giovanni di, 54 
Paolo Veronese, 239 
Papius, Caius, 96, 12 1 
Pappacartone, Alferio, 119 
Paray le Monial, 257 
Paris, 124 

Parma, School of, 56 
Parmenides, 144, 145 
Parmigiano, 56 
Parthenope, 6 
Paschal ii, Pope, 279 
Pastena, no 
Paterno, 153 
Patras, 240 
Paul III, Pope, 54, 55 
Paulus, 266 
Pausanias, 210, 214 
Pavia, 65, 291 
Pazzi, the, 21 
Pedro of Aragon, 16 
Pellaro, 183 

Peloponnesian War, the, 174 
Pergolesi, 30 
Pericles, 206 
Persano, 128, 129 
Perugino, 34 
Pescara, Marquis di, 65 
Petelia, 202 

Petrarch, 17, 19, 39, 41, 61 
Phalanthus, 214, 221 
Phalerum, 62 
Pheidias, 47 
Pherecydes, 173 
Philip II of Spain, 22, 55, 239 



PhiHp III of France, 158 
Philip III of Spain, 114 
Philip of Macedon, 48, 233 

of Montfort, 294 

of Parma, Duke, 23 
Philo, Publilius, 8 
Philoctetes, 202, 203 
Phlegrsean fields, the, 65, 79, 90 
Phocseans, the, 131, 143, 170, 172, 

180 
Phoenicians, the, 193 
Piccolomini, ^neas Silvias, 21 
Picentia, 120 
Piedigrotta, 65 
Piedmont, 17, 24 
Pietro of Capua, 113 

da Cortona, 243 
Pila, Jacopo della, 125 
Pilosa, 15 
Pino, Marco di, 52 
Pintorricchio, 54 
Piombo, Sebastiano del, 55 
Pipino, Giovanni, 275 
Pisa, no, 112, 183 
Pisano, Giovanni, 16 
Piscicelli, Niccol6, 125 
Pisciotta, 145 
Pius II, Pope, 114 
Pizzo, 167, 169 
Pizzofalcone, 2, 3, 9, 27, 28 
Plessis les Tours, 153, 154 
Pliny, 60, 64, 71. 77, 82-9, 93, 97, 
102, 104, 142, 208, 220, 224, 
230, 244, 288 
Poland, 239, 243 
Policastro, 98, 142, 145, 147,. 148, 

Policoro, 208 

Polignano, 236 

Pollio, Vedius, 63 

Pollius Felix, 100, loi 

Polybius, 6, 200 

Polycletus, 50 

Polycrates, 173 

Pompeii, 46-51, 57, 77, 80, 81-97, 

183, 257, 281 
Pompeius, Sextus, 200 
Pompey, 77, 234 
Potnpey, H.M.S., 105 
Pomponianus, 84, 97 
Pontecagnano, 120 
Pontone, 117 



INDEX 



309 



Portici, 46, 80, 81, 90 

Poseidonia, 131, 132, 135, 140, 

144, 170, 172, 176, 197, 205 
Posilipo, 2, 6, 8, 57-65, 73, 75 
Positano, 109, 141 
Pozzano, 98 
Pozzuoli, 6, 8, 26, 35, 57, 58, 62, 

64-79 
Praiano, no, 141 
Praxiteles, 47, 49 
Procida, 2 
Procopius, 89, 299 
Propertius, 72 
Provence, 16, 20, 297 
Puglia, 249 
Punic Wars, the, 132, 156, 182, 

199, 202, 207, 208, 218, 233 
Puteoli, 7, 57, 63, 68, 104 
Pyrrhus, 8, 132, 177, 182, 186, 

195, 207, 210, 217, 218, 290, 

291 
Pythagoras, 144, 173, 174, 191-5, 

197, 203, 206, 209, 215 
Pyxus, 148 

Quisisana, Casino di, 97 
Quixote, Don, 145 

Rainulf, ii, 258 

Raphael, 54 

Rashdall, Mr., 123 

Ravello, 112, 113, 115-8, 120, 

125, 141, 269 
Ravenna, 10, 77, 188 
Recanati, 65 

Reggio, 12, 143, 148, 154, 165, 
169, 172-6, 178-85, 208, 215, 
219, 235 
Regnier, General, 166 
Rene of Anjou, 20, 21 
Resina, 90 
Rhypse, 191 
Ribera, 53 

Richard i of England, 1 3 
Robert d'Artois, 38 

of Flanders, 294-8 

Duke of Normandy, 258 

the Wise, 16, 17, 19, 27, 28, 34, 
37-42, 61, 124, 255 
Rocca Imperiale, 207 
Roccella, 187 
Roccelletta, 189 



Rocella, 231 

Roger, Duke, 12, 13, 27, 29 

King of Naples, 112, 119, 136, 

142, 238, 261, 265, 271 
of Lecce, 226 
of Normandy, 135 
Rogliano, 160 
Romagna, 17 
Romano, Antoniazzo, 54 

Giulio, 54 
Rome, I, 19, 28, 37, 55, 153, 155, 
157, 200 
its relations with Naples and the 
South, 7-9, 63, 68, 92, 132, 
I45j Wl^ 182, 186, 202, 207, 
217-20, 225, 233, 263, 290, 
298 
S. Peter's, 114 
Romualdus, 264 

Romulus Augustulus, 8, 9, 28, 78 
Roseto, 207 
Rossano, 204, 231 
Rossellino, Antonio, 44 
Rossini, 30 

Rudolph of Hapsburg, 34 
Rufolo, Niccolo, 116 
Ruggero of Melfi, 264, 265 
Ruvo, 245, 246, 249 

S. Agata, 183 

Sagras, the, 173, 185, 187, 195 

S. Albans, 117 

Salerno, 10, ii, 12, 16, 98, loi, 
108, 112, 118-28, 131, 133, 
136, 141, 258, 261, 262 
Prince of, 29 

Samnites, the, 7 

Samos, 173, 193 

S. Andrew, 113-5 

Sandro, Amico di, 53 

San Germano, 292 

Sannazaro, 62 

Sanseverino, Ferdinando di, 42 

Sappho, 50 

Sapri, 148, 149 

Saracens, the, 10, 12, 36, *]?>, 109, 
III, 112, 118, 121, 122, 130, 
133, 140, 145, 157, 183, 187, 
204, 210, 212, 224, 226, 234, 
238, 247, 251, 272-7, 293 

Sardinia, 20 

Sarno, 21 



310 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 



Sarno, the, 92, 96 

Sarto, Andrea del, 54 

S. Asprenas, 36 

Savoy, 45 

Savuto, 160 

Scala, 112, 117, 118 

S. Cataldo, 226 

Scidrus, 148, 172, 174, 206 

Scilla, 169, 181 

Cardinal F. R., 24 
Scipio Africanus, 195 
Sebethus, 2, 6, 26 
Segovia, 156 
Seiano, 99 
Sejanus, 62,, 104 
S. Elmo, 65 

Seneca, 50, 58, 69, 75, 82, 92 
Septimius Severus, 291 
Serafini, Paolo de', 251 
Sergius iv, Duke, 11 
Serrastrella, 163 
Servius, 147 
Sestri, 98 

S. Eufemia, 160, 166 
S. Fili, 155 

Sforza, the, 22, 238, 239, 243 
S. Francesco da Paola, 151, 153, 154 
S. Francis of Assisi, 114, 153 
S. Gaudosius, 26 

S. Gennaro de' Poveri, 26, 35, 36 
S. Giorgio, Eusebio di, 54 
S. Giovanni in Fiore, 159 
Shelley, P. B., 94 
Sibari, 207 
Sibilla, Queen, 119 
Sibyl, Cumaean, 73 
Sicardo, in 

Sicilian Vespers, the, 16, 27 
Sicily, kingdom of, 6, 9, 12, 16, 17, 

20, 23, 123, 130, 155, 157, 

171, 174, 200, 226 
Sicyon, 206 
Siena, 21, 164 

Sienese School, the, 52, 54, 58 
Sila, the, 137, 138, 155-9, 160, 

161, 189, 202 
Silarus, the, 129 
Silius Italicus, 59, 60 
Sinni, the, 207, 208 
Sipontum, 278, 2S6 
Siris, 148, 149, 171, 173, 207, 208, 

216 



Sixtus IV, Pope, 153 

S. Januarius, 26, 33-6, Sj, 70 

S. John of Jerusalem, Order of, 

112, 117, 235, 236, 258 
S. Leo, 183 

S. Louis of Fi-ance, 15, 117 
S. Lucia, 28 

S. Marco Argentano, 153 
S. Maria de' Monti, 117 

di Leuca, 230 
S. Martino, 5 
S. Matthew, 124, 133 
Smith, Sir Sidney, 105 
S. Nicholas, 240-3 
S. Nilus, 204 
Soana, 260 
Soleto, 230, 231 
Solfatara, 35, 67, 70 
Solofrone, the, 139 
Sophocles, 48 
Sorrento, 2, 57, 62, 80, 96, 98-102, 

108, III, 118, 141 
Soveria Mannelli, 161, 163 
Spanish rule in Italy, 140 
Sparta, 176, 214, 216, 217, 224 
S. Paul, 60, 68, 225 
S. Pietro Apostolo, 163 

a Castagna, 117 
Spinazzola, 256, 262 
Squillace, 160, 170-2, 176, 188, 189 
S. Severo, 276 

Stabise, 50, 51, 77, 84, 92, 96, 97 
Statins, 59, 64, 100, loi 
St. Helena, 105 
Stilo, 188 
Strabo, 63, 64, 92, 100, 120, 129 

note, 142, 145, 167, 171, 184, 

192, 200, 202, 220, 232, 244, 

266, 272 
Stromboli, 169 
Strongoli, 202 
Stuart, Sir John, 166 
Stufe di San Germano, 66 
Suabia, 295 

Sueca, Ferdinand, Duke of, 44 
Suetonius, 69, 103, 104, 106 
Sulla, 8, 92, 96, 233, 263 
Swinburne, 133 
Sybaris, 6, 73, 131, 132, 139, 144, 

148, 149, 155, 160, 1 7 1-4, 180, 

185, 186, 191-4, 204-8, 212, 

214 



INDEX 



311 



Symonds, J. A., 60 note 
Syracuse, 68, 175, 181, 186 



Tacitus, 82, 92, 103 
Tagliacozzo, 15, ;^2 
Tancred, 13, 226, 227, 259 
Taranto, 13, 43, 144, 164, 170-2, 

176, 178, 181, 190, 193, 208, 

210-22, 226, 232, 233, 245, 

254, 290 
Filippo di, 130 
Gulf of, 202-10 
Tarquinius Superbus, 73 
Tasso, Torquato, loi 
Tavola de' Paladini, 209 
Teano, 7 
Teias, 10 
Telys, 206 

Terina, 167, 172, 176, 177, 192 
Terlizza, 249 
Terminio, 141 
Terracina, 98 
Thalbeig, Villa, 62, 64 
Thebes, 193 
Theocritus, 159, 202 
Theodoric, 9 

Theodosius, Emperor, 157 
Thrasyllus, 69 
Thucydides, 171 
Thurii, 174, 175, 177, 204-8, 216, 

217 
Tiberius Caesar, 8, 9, 6^, 69, 78, 

100, 103-7 
Tintoretto, 239 
Tiriolo, 160, 163, 165 
Titian, 30, 55 
Titus, Emperor, 82, 298 
Toledo, Pedro de, 22, 30, 33, 45, 

67, 75» 76 
Torre d'Agnazzo, 236 

del Greco, 90 
Torremare, 209 
Totila, 10, 183, 204, 220, 291 
Tovere, no 

Traeis, the, 174, 194, 206 
Trajan, Emperor, 289, 291, 298 
Trani, 116, 253 
Trasimene, 233, 269 
Trattano, 277 
Trebbia, 233 
Trebisaccie, 207 



Trinitapoli, 267 
Trionto, the, 203 
Triphylia, 180 
Tripoli, 190 
Troezen, 131, 135 
Troia, ii, 269-72, 288, 290 
Tropea, 168 
Tuliverno, 292 

Turks, the, 21, 183, 229, 230, 241, 
279 

Uberto, Piero Asino degli, 297 

UghelU, 228 

Umberto i, King, 45 

Umbrian School, the, 54 

Urban ii. Pope, 119, 240, 243^ 261, 

265 
Urban iv. Pope, 14 
Urban vi. Pope, 18 

Vala, Numonius, I2I 

Valona, 229 

Vandals, the, 9 

Van der Weyden, Roger, 53 

Vandyck, 30 

Varro, 266 

Vasari, 34, 40 

Velia, 6, 131, 140, 1 43-7, 170, 172, 

181 
Velletri, 23, 58 
Venetian School, the, 55 
Venice, 185 
Venosa, 256, 260, 262, 265, 266, 

290 
Ventimiglia, Count of, 293 
Verdarelli, 288 
Vesuvius, 2, 3, 10, 25, 57, 65, 77, 

79-95, 183, 257 
Vettica Maggiore, no 
Vicenza, 121 note 
Vico Equense, 99 
Victor III, Pope, 115 
Victor Emmanuel i, 29, 45, 46 
Vienna, 163 

Vietri, 98, 108, 118, 141 
Vigne, Pietro delle, 262 
Villa Nazionale, 3, 28 
Villani, 15, 166, 277, 292 
Villa S. Giovanni, 169 
Virgil, 9, 21, 28, 58-62, 72-4, 

102, 129, 130, 146, 197, 221, 

234 



312 NAPLES AND SOUTHERN ITALY 



Visconti, the, 20 
Vitalis, Ordericus, 123 
Viterbo, 14 
Vitruvius, 21 
Vivarini, Alvise, 55, 251 
Bartolommeo, 55, 243 
Volturno, 24, 292 
Vomero, 3, 25 
Voragine, 240-2, 285 

Walpole, Horace, 230 

Wells, 257 

Wilkins, 133 

William i, 238, 258, 271 



William, Dukes of Naples, 12, 13, 

27, 32 
of Austria, 19 
of the Iron Arm, 258-60 
Winchester, 257 

Xenophanes, 144 
Xerxes, 47, 69 

Zaleucan Code, the, 185 
Zancle, 180, 181 
Zeno, Emperor, 144, 286 
Zeuxis, 198 



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